Continue reading »]]> SERIES: FROM THE HETPAT ARCHIVES

[Note:  Have done a slight edit on this one to clarify a couple of points and incorporate some useful feedback] 

First published October 25th 2012

It’s fair to say that I’ve found the reviews, critiques and comment pieces inspired by Hanna Rosin’s End of Men rather more thought provoking and educational than the book itself.

One of the first pieces to come out was in The Atlantic, where Chloe Angyal drew comparisons between Rosin’s argument and the lives portrayed in the much-hyped HBO series Girls.

“the anecdotal data, the experiential accounts of what it’s like to be a young American woman in this particular cultural moment where women are on top and men are “ending,” suggests that even if the statistics say that they’re winning, young women feel like losers. This year’s critically acclaimed new HBO series Girls, created by and starring Lena Dunham, takes that experience of floundering and lays it out for all to see. Dunham’s Hannah and her friends, despite their privilege, don’t feel like they’re running the world.”

I must confess this made me smile. It inadvertently (I presume) illuminates the irony at the very heart of the notion of privilege. One’s own privilege is, according to the classic metaphor, an invisible knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks – invisible not to others but to ourselves. Privilege doesn’t feel like privilege, it just feels like a natural state of being, the norm.

I’ve already explained my reasons for rejecting the theory of the End of Men, and I don’t for a moment believe that women are now the dominant or privileged gender. But it is worth pointing out that if they were, according to feminism or critical theory, this is exactly how it should feel. The girls in Girlsdon’t feel like they’re running the world but, get this, nor do the vast majority of men. I believe much of the anger directed towards feminism from the angry dudes of the internet boils down to the disconnect between a narrative that tells men they are privileged, and the lives being lived by those guys, which feels largely powerless. They don’t feel privileged, they feel like losers, they’re floundering, they don’t feel like they’re running the world. Hey ho.

In the weeks since Rosin’s book was released, a quite almighty stramash has erupted within feminist circles. You can’t have missed it, and I won’t reiterate the arguments here, but it began with Caitlin Moran and her statement that she ‘couldn’t give a shit’ about the all-white line-up of the cast of Girls. It has since spiralled into an angry, sprawling debate that orbits around issues of privilege and intersectionality.

Of the near-endless articles and blogs thrown up by the debate, the one I liked best was by Stavvers. She offers an analogy for the concept of intersectionality that is as good as anything I’ve read on the topic by a feminist.

“one can think about a four-way junction (or, as the Americans call it, an intersection). One road is not being male. Another road is not being white. Another road is not being able-bodied. The last road is not being cis. Now, if you stand in the middle of any one of these roads, you’re going to be dodging traffic. But if you stand right in the middle of the junction, you have cars coming at you from four ways, and you’re going to have to do a fuckload more dodging than you would have if you were just in one road.

I don’t know if that’s why it’s called intersectionality, but if not, it should be.”

I love the vividness of this analogy, but it doesn’t quite fit with how I understand society. I’d like to offer a slight twist that perhaps illustrates a key difference between my gender politics and those of many feminists.

Stavvers describes her roads in negative terms (not being male, not being white etc) whereas the analogy works better for me if we think in terms of who we are, rather than who we are not. That is all I know.

When people compile privilege checklists they often include many negatives – bad things that don’t happen to you because of who you are. I reject this. Not being harassed on the street is not a privilege enjoyed by anyone but is a fundamental right that should be enjoyed by everyone. Occasionally there are actual independent advantages to being white, straight, male etc, but they are rare. However there is a real privilege is not even having to be aware of the nature of the traffic on someone else’s road.

I’m a white, straight , cisgendered, middle-class, able-bodied male. I cannot accurately know what it feels like to be anything else, but I know perfectly well how all those things do or do not impact upon my life.  I’d prefer to think of Stavvers’s traffic as all the various pieces of shit, large and small, that life throws our way simply for being who we are. If you’re a black, lesbian, disabled woman, yes, that shit is coming hurtling at you from all sides and however hard you try to avoid it, some of that shit is going to mess you up.

Some of the traffic is driven by individual actions of racists, misogynists or individuals who otherwise oppress others but most of it is institutional and necessary to the socioeconomic system.

I know what it is like to be a pedestrian on the highway marked ‘White.’ It’s a breeze. The amount of shit-traffic heading my way down that road is all but zero. I could lay out a sleeping bag across the white lines in October, set my alarm clock for Spring and lie down to hibernate, safe in the knowledge that not one single car, truck or bus will squish my toes. Being white is a piece of piss. The same goes for the road marked “straight.” The same goes for being middle-class, able-bodied and cisgendered. All those things are just big old lonesome highways without so much as a trundling tractor to disturb the bliss. I should know, I’ve been walking those roads for 45 years.

Crucially, however, this isn’t exactly how it feels to be male. Not to me, and not to many other men either. Standing in the middle of the road marked ‘Male’, I have to dodge loads of traffic. Whizzing by on one side are the gender expectations, the demands to be a stoical, self-sacrificial breadwinner and provider, a sexual conqueror, all that old, stubborn heteronormative and patriarchal bollocks. Whooshing past on the other are the prejudices and assumptions about male aggression or violence, laziness, criminality, domestic and parental incompetence and all the rest. All around are the institutional shit-trucks sent by legal structures, education policies, health services, military traditions and more. Is the road marked ‘male’ busier and more difficult to traverse than the road marked ‘female’? No, I don’t believe it is, but it doesn’t need to be, this is not a competition.  If you’re a woman and/or a feminist and you’re reading this and sneering, thinking “that stuff doesn’t sound too difficult to me, what’s your problem?” then congratulations – you’ve just entered the precise, privileged mind-set of every angry anti-feminist MRA dude on the internet. Of course you don’t see it – it’s not your road.

Personally, all that male shit-traffic is pretty easy for me to dodge. I’m not at a busy junction. I don’t have to worry about being caught on the blindside by a juggernaut hurtling down the White Road or the Straight Road, so I’ve mostly found it pretty easy to sidestep all that shit on the Male Highway. But if you’re a boy from a poor background in a poor neighbourhood at a poor school, you’re likely to find one vehicle marked “you’re stupid” racing at you in one direction while another marked “you’re lazy” arrives from the other, and bang, the result is often academic underachievement and a NEET future. If you’re a working class black lad then you’ve got one shit-truck marked “you’re trouble” and another marked “you’re a criminal” and another marked “you’re violent” and bang, unless you’re lucky you are another stop and search statistic or another reluctant conscript into gang culture.

Understanding intersectionality in those terms is very useful for me. It’s a great example of how we can apply feminist thinking to the male experience and male-specific problems. It doesn’t require one to sign up to either a feminist or an anti-feminist agenda and could fit comfortably with either. It gives me a sense of perspective on my own (fairly fortunate) place in society, why the world looks like it does to me, and crucially, why it might look entirely different to others who stand on a different intersection.

So it is useful in understanding where we are, but I think it is also useful in terms of where we would like to be. At a political level, we can ask what it is about our society that is sending so fucking much shit-traffic down some of the different roads – the disabled road, the  black road, the Muslim road, the women’s road and, yes, the men’s road too. We can not only ask how we can reorganise society so there is less shit on anyone’s road, we can also constantly ask ourselves whether our behaviour, our deeds or our words and language are sending a bit more unnecessary shit-traffic down someone else’s highway.

As my final word on Rosin’s The End of Men, I’d observe that the book does not describe an improving world. It describes a world where there is more shit-traffic than ever on women’s roads, and more shit-traffic than ever on men’s roads. When I write that the transformation of the workplace and domestic realm is not a victory for feminism but a victory for capitalism, this is precisely what I mean.  If we aspire to a better society, socially and economically, for men and women alike, then counting the vehicles on the various highways of shit might be a very good place to start.

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a strange evening. I had a crowd of people descend on my hotel room after the evening’s events at Women In Secularism and a good day of wonderful and inspiring talks from strong women, and besides just wanting to talk and celebrate, they wanted to complain. These are people who came here for a conference on women’s issues, and they were really annoyed that the head of CFI, Ron Lindsay, chose to use the opening talk of the conference to basically chastise the attendees and instruct them in how to behave, and I’ve had more than one person tell me that they were irate that their introduction to an event that they paid a considerable sum of money was to be greeted by a talk that pandered to people who hated the event, and were volubly complaining on the internet throughout the day about it. The impression they had was that the organization was unhappy to be sponsoring this conference.

That is a weird and impolitic message to send to attendees. It was especially weird to hear that on day one, and then to watch Melody Hensley, the person who did the organizational work to set up the meeting, make fundraising pitches at the evening reception on both days. Melody definitely stands behind the purpose of this event, there’s no doubt about that at all, but we’re simultaneously getting this bizarre vibe that CFI, as represented by Lindsay, does not like this feminist stuff, and would rather that we all went away and the MRAs who are crowing about his talk were here instead.

Who is he supporting? The people who actively invest in this meeting and CFI, or the jerks who lurk on the internet and rage at women all day long with no commitment to any cause besides hatred, and are openly hoping to see the meeting fail?

What has also caused all these people to lose confidence in Lindsay is that today, he posted a complaint against Rebecca Watson, who is here both as a speaker and as a sponsor of attendees here, comparing her to a propagandist for North Korea, and blathering misconceptions about his odd understanding of the idea of privilege and asserting that there is an effort to silence men (he’s very resentful of the idea that men might be expected to be silent long enough to listen to the experience of minorities). Or rather, he’s unhappy with the hyphenated entity Myers-Watson (really, we aren’t married, not even close), because he also posted a tirade against me for stating that shutting up and listening, that is, paying attention to and respecting the experiences of the underprivileged, is an appropriate strategy for learning about and responding to the concerns of people outside your class, sex, and race. Which, I thought, was the goal of this conference.

A lot of people are extraordinarily irritated by this effort by the head of CFI to undermine a CFI-sponsored conference. That’s why this one tired old man was listening to a crowd of annoyed conference attendees packed into his hotel room at 2am complain about mismanagement and loss of confidence in the administration of CFI. Attendees who paid $250 each, plus transportation and hotel costs, to listen to big names in feminism and secularism talk, and who got that plus a director who seemed more interested in appeasing an obsessed gang of manic, moronic anti-feminist spammers who’d been flooding the twitter feed (a strange corruption of the usual use of conference hashtags that I’ve never witnessed before) and countering the purpose of the conference.

I was put in the unusual and awkward position of having to reassure these attendees that CFI really was a great organization (something the head of CFI should have been doing, right?) despite the apparent opposition of the man in charge…a man who had just posted a bitter complaint about me on the web. I had to remind them that the woman who was specifically in charge of this conference, Melody Hensley, was on their side, and supported the cause of women in secularism despite the apparent intransigence of her boss.

I’m only here as an attendee myself, yet here I am having to defend the organization. I have no reputation as a diplomat, yet here I am trying to put out the fires that the CEO of the organization himself has enflamed. What kind of screwed up mess is this?

OK, I give up. I’m going to bed to get a couple of hours of sleep. Let’s hope Ron Lindsay wakes up and realizes he’s just blown up what ought to be a great success for CFI (the speakers here have been phenomenal) and turned it into a colossal PR disaster, and tries to change course. If it’s not too late already.

Continue reading »]]> Before I heard of the word “gaslighting”, I had difficulty articulating why I shouldn’t be shamed for getting angry or upset at someone else’s behavior.  And then I read this article about it…

I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a term, often used by mental health professionals (I am not one), to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.

The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film, played by Charles Boyer, wants to get his hands on her jewelry. He realizes he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and hauled off to a mental institution. To pull of this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.

Today, when the term is referenced, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “You’re so stupid” or “No one will ever want you” to the victim. This is an intentional, pre-meditated (sic) form of gaslighting, much like the actions of Charles Boyer’s character in Gaslight, where he strategically plots to confuse Ingrid Bergman’s character into believing herself unhinged.

The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always pre-mediated or intentional, which makes it worse, because it means all of us, especially women, have dealt with it at one time or another.

I grew up with the expectation to be a “good girl”; you can’t express unpleasant emotions like anger.  Frankly a lot of that cultural conditioning came with religious indoctrination that as a female I was a ‘help mate” to a man. I still have difficulty expressing when I am justifiably upset, because of gaslighting. Like being told I “needed to calm down” or asked the popular question “are you on your period?”  Realistically even if I am menstruating that doesn’t mean I have to shoulder the entirety of the blame for someone else’s rude or obnoxious behavior.

Of course I’m not the only woman this happens to. I’ve even seen this as a shaming technique against women speaking up about feminism in the free thought movement. Even some of the same shaming that went on in less enlightened times like accusations of “hysteria“.

I posted on this issue in another forum, and some women expressed gratitude that the term gaslighting helped them to name the manipulative behavior they had been subjected to many times. It has been an epiphany for me to, so I wanted to post it here too in hopes it will help others.

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Secularism: A Right and Demand of Women Worldwide

Maryam Namazie

Full bio of Maryam’s accomplishments is insanely long. She’s kind of amazing.

“You know Kostanza on Seinfeld? Leave on a high note. I’m leaving now.” *laughs*

Talked earlier about solidarity with atheists who’ve been persecuted: Amina Tyler from Tunisia who posted nude photos, was kidnapped by family, was given psychiatric tests, drugs, imam talks. Managed to escape. Collecting money to get her out of Tunisia now. Posted another nude photo saying “No more moral lessons”.

Imad Iddine Habib – 22 year old who posted photos of himself eating during Ramadan, has been a fatwa by ruling imama saying apostasy should be punished with death.

Alexander Aan who is in jail for Facebooking about being atheist.

Murders and attempted murders against islamic protesters, women trying to go to school.

Today is an era of the 99% movement; uprisings in Africa etc, many of them women-led.

Many feminists and secularists remain firmly on the side of the islamists — any opposition to veil and Sharia law are met with charges of cultural imperialism, racism and more. Those who feel that way have bought into the narrative. This point of view sees islamist sentiments as authentically Islamic.

Islamists resort to abuse and threats of physical violence. Resort to threatening and attacking people who criticize.

Even someone like Salman Rushdie speaks for Muslims. He speaks their doubts. He speaks for the ones who can’t say these doubts themselves.

Extremists threaten with death people who would criticize them. Opposition to islamism has nothing to do with cultural imperialists patronizingly “rescuing” women muslims.

Difference and diversity are double-edged concepts. Have been used by reactionary forces to maintain that difference. Deep desire that difference remain different.

Opposing Sharia law has nothing to do with islamophobia. Saying so denies the dissent amongst Muslims. Islamism is a conservative movement like the far right here — concern is to defend islamism, not Muslims. If they were concerned about Muslims, they would stop terrorizing Muslims.

Fundamentalist terror against muslims is not a legitimate response that can be supported by the progressives of the world. Like fascists, islamists subjugate women and kill what they think to be inferior. Religion is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to women’s emancipation — and especially true of islamism. Islamism is a mafia, a killing machine, a political movement, not a religion itself — co-opting that religion. They say that women have full rights, but they don’t mean what they say.

Relativism sides with those who are oppressing. Women’s rights are not only for Western women. *applause*

Even if you leave aside Islamic jurisprudence, the suras in the Hadith include stoning women to death, wife-beating, etc. When you have discussion of rights with islamists, you should ask what they mean by rights — they often mean they have full rights under Sharia, though those rights are blatantly unequal.

Is there a good interpretation of religious texts? “NO!” Thank you.

Different interpretations of Sharia Law will claim that beating women involves a feather, or can’t leave a mark, but any violence against women is unacceptable, full stop.

No religion frees women. Women are freer when religion has less to do with laws and culture, not the other way around. Islamist demands come from political movement used to suppress revolutions and put down dissent. Must control the streets and arrest and fine people with brutality for what they think, how they dress, etc. If it was everyone’s culture, women wouldn’t be attacked by police in the streets for improperly veiling or forced to remove their makeup. Sharia and islamist laws are oppressive — and there’s no right to oppress.

Since when are secularism and rights Western? Islamists use the latest Western tech to hurt and subjugate, including bombing, nuclear technology. It’s not “western” when it’s tech used to suppress — but when it’s rights for women, it’s suddenly “western”. Those rights belong to all of humanity.

Mass movements against things like compulsory veiling were crushed brutally. After decades of brutality, we must be on the offensive. Women’s liberation movement is at a place where women can bring Islamism to its knees.

“We are not sitting in judgment of this world, we are players and participants in it.”

Q: How do you suggest those of us who are not Middle Eastern or African descent walk that tightrope?

Q: How should a progressive secular org approach bigoted activists like Pamela Geller?

Both of these questions are linked. Doesn’t matter where you come from — if you think something’s wrong, you should say somethign about it. Islamists have made criticism impossible because we don’t want to be labelled racist. But they’ll also tell Maryam she don’t have a right to talk about Islam because she’s an apostate. And not Shi’a, and Iranian. Etc. Don’t have to be black to oppose racial apartheid in South Africa. Essence of human solidarity that is lost in this debate. I’m not gay, but I support gay rights. Am I allowed to do that? Of course. Racism is something to be avoided, but it’s not racist to decry those injustices.

Far right is a huge concern — blame Muslims for islamism’s crimes, it’s difficult to sort out. Muslims attacking Americans overseas seeing them as responsible for America’s war crimes. Far right taking over the narrative is dangerous because they’re misframing everything.

There’s a racism of double standards and different expectations. Secularism is good not just because it’s good for Western people — it’s good for the people who want different rules and regulations, who are women under Sharia law, etc.

Another target is the far right — report called “Enemies Not Allies”. Considers progressive left also a problem — cultural relativists and post-modernists are undercutting rights fight.

The more of us speak up, the more it will have an impact in the public space.

Q: In your opinion, what percentage of Iran is secular / atheist?

Don’t know, because it’s a crime to be an atheist there. Even in Morocco, where there’s no penalty, it’s still a crime.

Huge resistance in Iran. Center of a mass anti-islamist backlash. Has had effect on Arab Spring. Think it’s huge, but you have “that sort of islam” on everyone’s head and it’s hard to gauge. Still see atheists wearing burqas to avoid attacks.

Q: Some people say “Islamic women have it worse than you, shut up about your problems”, how do you take those statements?

I don’t agree with them. You can always find someone worse. That sort of statement isn’t helpful. There are of course degrees of oppression, there are very different things. It’s good to be able to label and identify the differences. But even if there’s not honor killings in the west, the problems here also need to be addressed.

Q: How long do revolutions in the muslim world led by women remain positive toward women?

Secularists haven’t done much to support those revolutions. Both islamists and western governments want theocracies because they’re good ways to control the population. Western states sometimes prefer the Islamic regimes in the Middle East — look at the Saudi states, etc. Only problem western govts have with islamism is that they dared to come into the west, perform terrorist acts. Not the terrorist acts against south africa or middle east.

Where Muslim Brotherhood was nowhere to be seen in Egyptian protests, CNN kept asking about them. That pushed them forward. Secularists are not organized the same way that islamists can. They don’t have the ability to push themselves forward the way islamists do.

Instant protest photo — everyone in audience writes a sign and holds it up in protest of islamic theocracy killing and jailing people for heresy.

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Next up is Maryam Namazie, a blogger and activist who’s been involved with tons of secular organizations: Equal Rights Now, the One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, and Iran Solidarity.

5:00: Namazie is talking about secular activists in the Muslim world who are being persecuted for speaking out. At the end of her talk, she will ask us all to write them a message.

5:04: There have been protests over the treatment of Malala Yousafzai, Amina Tyler, and others. You can see the immense resistance taking place day in and day out in response to Islamism, US-led militarism, and cultural relativism. Today as an era or revolutions and uprisings in the Muslim world, and many of them are women-led.

It may seem that Islamists are making gains in the area, but change is palpable. Yet many feminists, cultural relativists, and others are on the side of Islamists and believe that any opposition to Sharia law is tantamount to racism and cultural imperialism. But they’ve bought into the notion that Muslim communities are homogenous–Islamic and conservative. But there is no homogenous culture, and those in power determine the dominant culture. These relativists claim that Islamists represent authentic Islam.

5:07: A professor received death threats for posting this cartoon on his office door:

Conflating Islamism with Islam is a narrative that is peddled by Islamists to prescribe the limits of acceptable expression.

The demand for secularism is no more imperialist than the demand for women’s suffrage. Post-modernists who demand “respect and tolerance for difference” no matter how intolerable that difference is are siding with oppressors.

5:12: Islamophobia is used as a tactic to scaremonger critics into silence. It’s made not out of actual concern for Muslims, but out of a desire to support Islamism. If you really wanted to support Muslims, you would oppose Islamism, which kills more Muslims than anything else.

5:14: Everyone has a right to their religious beliefs. But Islamism isn’t just personal beliefs. Saying that people have a right to Islamism is saying that women’s liberation is only for white American women.

The idea that islamism is just a “misinterpretation” of the religion is inaccurate. The Koran and the Hadith are full of anti-woman laws and principles. Stoning to death for adultery is a Hadith; Mohammed himself stoned a woman to death for adultery. In the Koran there are suras on wife-beating.

5:17: Is  there a “good” interpretation of religion?  [audience: "No!"]

For instance, a Sharia court said that it’s ok to beat women as long as you do it “lightly” and don’t leave any marks. But no violence against women is acceptable.

Women are freer the lesser the role religion plays in the public sphere. Secularism is a precondition for the improvement of women’s status. All women, not just those who are Western.

5:20: If people really wanted to live under these rules, Islamists would not need to enforce them with such brutality.

Of course there are some people who prefer Sharia law to secular law, including some who are born in the West. Some people support racial apartheid, too. But there is no right to oppress. Post-modernists who suppose Islamists say that our demands are Western, but since when is secularism a Western demand?

When it comes to women’s right, when it comes to freedom, these rights suddenly become “Western.”

5:24: Reader question: How should those of us who are not of Middle Eastern/African descent walk the fine line of criticizing this? How should a progressive secular organization approach bigoted anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller?

Namazie: It doesn’t matter where you come from. If you think something is wrong, you should be able to say it. The Islamists have made it impossible to speak up and criticize because of this label of racism, which we should rightly fear. But they will also tell me that I don’t have the right to speak about Islam because I’m an ex-Muslim, or that I wasn’t a “real Muslim” because I was Shia. There’s always an excuse for why you’re not allowed to speak. But we have a right to speak about any injustice anywhere.

Racism exists. As an ex-Muslim I face racism. There are lots of people who aren’t Muslim who face racism. Racism doesn’t stop if you stop criticizing people’s beliefs; that’s a cop-out. You’re not going to deal with racism against Muslims by stopping free expression. These are bogus arguments to stop the debate from taking place.

Far-right European/American movements against Islam attack all Muslims because they blame them for Islamists’ crimes. And Islamists attack innocent people on buses and in discos because they blame them for American militarists’ crimes. If we don’t criticize Islamism, we leave the space open for far-right racists to attack it. They seem to be the only ones speaking, but we have to stand up and speak from a purely rights-based perspective–everyone should have the same rights. It’s not anti-racist to demand different rights for different people; it’s actually racist to do that. Secularism is good not just because you’re white and Western, but because it’s better for women. Not all Muslims want the laws that Islamists want.

5:30: Reader question: What percentage of the population in Iran is secular or atheist?

Namazie: I don’t know because it’s a crime to be an atheist in Iran. I would say it’s a large percentage. The Iranian Revolution wasn’t an Islamic revolution; it was a left-leaning revolution and the Islamic movement appropriated it and has ruled with sheer terror for the past several decades. Iran is the center of a mass anti-Islamic backlash.

The problem is, though, that it’s hard to gauge who’s who. I met a woman who was an atheist but she was wearing a burka. It’s hard to know the real numbers.

5:33: Reader question: There are people who make statements that because Muslim women have it so bad, Western women should just be quiet about their own experiences. How do these statements strike you?

Namazie: I don’t agree with those statements. You can always find a situation that’s worse. When I discuss women’s rights in Iran, people say, “Oh, but it’s so much worse in Saudi Arabia.” Women can drive in Iran. Yay. Of course there are degrees of oppression. For instance, some people want to call honor killings domestic violence. But that’s a very different thing. So it’s good to be able to name it, label it, and speak of the differences.

But the situation of women in the West is not perfect, either. And this is a fight that is global. I don’t find the comparisons very helpful.

5:35: Reader question: Revolutions in the Muslim world may be initially led by women, but how long do they remain positive towards women?

Namazie: What have secularists here done to support those women-led revolutions? Not very much. Both Western governments and Islamists want Islamic regimes because they’re a great way to control the population. What greater oppressor than a theocratic state? In Iran, the West supported the Shah’s regime, but when the revolution happened, Western leaders decided that they preferred the Islamic regime.

This happened during the era of the Cold War, when the U.S. was trying to build a green Islamic belt around the Soviet Union. They supported the Taliban and an Islamic regime in Iran. Some of the greatest allies of the West are now Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia.

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The History of Atheism, Feminism, and the Science of Brains
with Jennifer Michael Hecht

Tremendous hope and despair expressed here. Very first thing we can do to forward our goals is to show up.

It’s great to come out of the closet but you should also leave the house.

Had no idea how many atheists I’d discover throughout history. Had PhD in history, written about atheists in modern period. When did research, astounded to find people in every period all over the world, and more, that they offered another way to live.

Many women in history. Had smorgasbord of women to choose from — found women atheists, doubters, secularists, throughout history and all over the world. Even Job’s wife said “curse God and forget him.”

Found transcripts of the inquisition — not just people who believed one crazy thing or another, but many heretics who believed like us that everything was crazy. “Bubonic plague took my whole family — if there’s a creator, he’s not the locus of morality because he’s killed everyone!”

We have to be the ones to cultivate this memory. All of it is on Wikipedia. Don’t have to be a member of secret enclaves to find this info!

Many names — Ernestine Rose, Jewish secularist atheist lecturing around country. George Eliott was author of novels, out and proud. Elizabeth Kate Stanton, amazing figure and leader of feminist movement.

We don’t always remember this stuff exactly, but it changed the world, changed how we think.

Margaret Sanger, “No Gods No Masters”. Helped contraceptives become legal. Problematic with eugenics, but have to pick and choose.

French Translator of Darwin, Clemence Royer. Translation was careful to make evolution atheist and anti-religion — where original said “nature does the selecting”, and people could say “nature” was “God”, couldn’t do that in French. Because Royer added 37 pages of translation to condense and summarize the antitheist aspects of the book.

“Progress of truth gives us as much to forget as to affirm.”

France builds anthropology in a completely atheist and anti-Catholic way. Builds on Darwin, as well as Paul Broca’s work.

Sagan’s “Broca’s Brain” talked about how science changes, and how we don’t really keep scientists’ brains in jars so much any more.

Broca found a lesion in brain of “Tan”, person who could only say “tan”, on speech center of the brain. This was offensive to Catholics — challenged the brain being the seat of the soul. How could the meat think? This was discovered ten years before Origin of Species.

Anthropologists meeting as atheists then figured out that the material world was all there was. Until then, the magisteria were everything physical, and thought, where thought was left to religion. At Society of Anthropology, Clemence was a full member. They further created the “Society for Mutual Autopsy, name calculated to challenge the Catholic Church.

Got access to French archives for Society of Anthropology. (Found box of “Clichees” — which were rubber stamps.) Got access to records of Autopsies. In 1880, Broca’s brain was dissected too — all of them were dissected to look for more lesions like the one in Tan.

They were imbuing their deaths with meaning and forwarding science, especially with saying “leave my body to the scientists” rather than the priests.

Gardner (“Men, Women and Gods”) was American, when she was alive and lecturing, there was a research paper that came out saying that women’s brains were inferior to men. She donated her brain to science.

1893 – first Freethought Convention. Its focus was the rights of women. We’ve forgotten this, but should remember. Royer was celebrated at this.

Royer read much of this stuff about women’s and men’s brains, and thought she’d been born with a man’s brain. Broca had said that women are a little less intelligent, and their brains were smaller, therefore maybe there was a correlation. But then they studied German brains compared to French, and they were larger “and that couldn’t be!” So body mass was factored in, and women’s brains were sized correctly for the correlation.

Why don’t they study tall and short men’s brains? If you’re trying to make scientific assertions for political reasons, why not make all the correlations? The critiques of the bad science are out there… we just have to stay on them. Atheism used to be more respectable in 1800s than it is now. Cold war shut it down because Soviets were atheist; thus “In God We Trust” on money in 1957. Most murderous enemy is no longer atheist country– it’s now places that are more religious than us. Hopefully this means an upswing.

Mention of Hubert Harrison. We see each other, we enjoy the crowd, sometimes we don’t understand how we’re helping each other but we’re helping. Learn your empowering history. Sometimes the knowledge of how the changes happened (e.g. the French anthropologists) are lost, but the changes themselves persist.

Learn feminist theory. Try to both see the oppression and the advantages, recognize as much as you want what some people don’t have, you have to give away a little bit. Both sides need to give and get.

Have to speak the truth. Say what you think is right. If they start arguing with you, tell them to look it up. But don’t let it pass. It takes courage, but don’t let it pass.

For the littlest things, when it seems like it’s about almost nothing, make sure that person isn’t speaking to an empty room. Listen.

Don’t put up with inequality. Sometimes someone comes up with something real clever, some bell curve that puts you down. You can stand up to them, and say “I know that’s not true.” You can go find the books and prove them wrong.

Idea of evolution, one animal changing to another — that’s a religious idea originally. There was one Adam and one Eve, and somehow they had to change to the different races. Evolution for a while was a religious position. The idea that evolution was a watermark of what side of religious divide you were on, comes from William Jennings Bryant. When he picked evolution as the line in the sand. Meanwhile, once upon a time, there was a line in the Bible about Joshua making the sun stand still. That meant the sun was moving, not us. They let that one go.

Q: re religion and evolution, missed it

Darwin gave us a mechanism but it must have happened — quote of “if souls existed without bodies there would be mangos hanging without trees”.

Q: Best evidence about revisionist history that lies or hides atheist history?

Looking at any given historical moment, would find atheists. But looking at surveys, the atheists all fell out. No doubt in my mind there’s been more non-believers through history than believers. Very specific ideas like afterlife and mystery religions are traceable to specific time frames — you know when they were invented, like Superman. Idea that religion is the dominant force all the time — that’s an idea we’re sold from the religious viewpoint. If you look closely, you see differences. How could it be otherwise? We’re anatomically no different from people in the ancient world.

By the time Plato was writing, they were writing about rampant atheism. Middle ages, islamic world, had many doctors who were atheist, who talked about the evidentiary miracle in the Koran, made fun of the metaphors in the Koran to prove it wasn’t god-given.

What can we do to recover? I think we’re doing it. We’re reviving atheism from the stifling effect of the cold war.

Q: Kirk Cameron’s Origin of Species with the creationist foreward recently — was it specifically replacing Royer’s?

Darwin liked the foreword at first but helped finance a new translation later. When church was losing ground on the definition of the soul, they changed that definition. I’m not someone who believes eventually everyone will be an atheist — there’s life cycle issues. People live lots of different ways. There is a progressive movement toward more room for science and reason-based art.

Except for the Simpsons, there’s not much church on TV. We’re winning the fight. We have to be the vocal minority but we may very well have a majority behind us.