Continue reading »]]> I pity the poor sod who has to wade through the comments over at CFI’s blog. Frankly, they’ve got possibly the worst job in the world right now. However, I’m going to push that fact aside for a moment, mute that in-built empathy for my fellow human being for just long enough to complain that they’re not actually doing that job to any degree one can call reasonable.

I’m not necessarily going to BLAME them, per se, though. The tone has been set in Ron Lindsay’s three blog posts that are about his experience at Women In Secularism 2.

Note that these blog posts are not ABOUT Women In Secularism 2, which was a tightly organized and implemented CFI conference, and which by my understanding, through the rumour mill, is the CFI conference closest to breaking even this year (can we get independent verification of this?). It was by all accounts a success, but by no accounts an unmitigated one. It was bookended by tone-deaf missives about how terrible feminists have been to certain clueless, privileged dudebros in our community. In fact, the first one, by Ron Lindsay, carried with it a heavy dose of shame for daring to invoke the sociological concept of privilege, showing a blatant misunderstanding of the word.

But that’s not what I’m talking about today. I’ll be fisking his post another day — and on that day I’m sure I’ll be called irrational and compared disfavourably to some despotic country. Today, instead, I’m talking about the CFI Open Letter, and how it reflects upon the community what’s being left up in the comments on those blog posts.

Libertarians of the laissez-faire and no-rules-allowed sorts, anti-feminists and anti-Watson-ists, flat-out Men’s Rights Activists, and the usual crew of people fixated on how horrible Watson, PZ, FtB and A+ are because they got banned at one point in the distant past for having been themselves abusive of dialogue, all swarmed on these comment threads. In part, many of them did so to post their support of Ron Lindsay for standing up to those uppity women, and calling him (and themselves) “Brave Hero” for doing so.

A lot of comments are civil enough about their contrafactual takes on human history and the existence of gender imbalances in our present Western society, and are worthy of smacking down in the same way that one might smack down the hundredth time someone smarmily demands us to explain why there are monkeys if evolution is true. Those sorts of re-fighting the same territory with little added value are a distraction, certainly, but they are not themselves exemplar of any sort of abrogation of “civility” of the sort decried in the Open Letter that is supposedly epidemic in our movement except that they themselves claim to be members of our community of skeptics, and/or are names that have long been associated with fighting these specific fights.

For instance, we have Elevatorgate posting about his Storifys and his having misappropriated the womeninsecularism.com domain to post a vitriol-filled “parody” site. The same guy that ostensibly Lindsay should be going after for misappropriating and attempting to destroy the Women In Secularism “brand” had this to say about Ron:

#7 Hero on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 1:51am

Thanks for remaining steadfast in your heroism, and standing up to Becky. http://storify.com/ElevatorGATE/conversation-with-rebeccawatson-ralindsay-and-mist

http://womeninsecularism.com/2013/05/17/r-lindsay-is-a-hero/

The Tim Channel pipes in with some of his usual hyperbole, followed by his omnipresent entreaty to please, please enjoy what he has to say, as though it’s entertaining, relevant, or even close enough to reality to bear some commentary value. You’ll note that there’s a severe shortage of charity, a distinct dialing-up of drama, and a total disinterest in the actual history and actual feelings of the people involved in some historical events of the secular community, many of which have achieved mythological proportions amongst feminism-haters:

#16 The Tim Channel (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 6:37am

Many other men of high stature within the skeptic community have tried to make the point you made, the most humorous and damning of which was Matt Dillahunty.  They are American Girlyban.  They do not negotiate. They block, ban and bully.  I was one of the early victims so I cleaned up the evacuation shelter and just waited for the rest of you to roll in.  I got a ton of company now, even a lot of women.  I expect this debacle will continue until the top two or three lunatics on the #atheismplus side are more fully marginalized.  Lord knows they jumped the shark sometime between #elevatorgate and #donglegate.  Welcome.  Coffee is on the house.  Enjoy.

He goes on like this in a few more comments, and rest assured, you’re asked to “enjoy” every one of them!

Elsewhere, another person laments that PZ Myers never gets his say unless he’s expressly allowed to speak by the feminist overladies, an opinion that doesn’t at all need to be backed up by evidence (surely, we should trust this person, and not bother to verify!), nor would ever poison the well by refusing to listen to the actual arguments presented, or serve to increase the “drama” of this conversation, given how charitable it is about the idea that women might actually deserve a say now and again:

#18 Hunt (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 2:40pm

 

>>“It’s also ironic that of the three examples you linked, two are articles written by men. So how could they be invoking identity?”

The reason for that is that many feminist men have embraced the idea that their place is to remain mute, i.e. not interact conversationally, when instructed to do so.  PZ Myers certainly fits this model.  They might converse when tolerated, that is, speak when spoken to, but women feminists have the option to direct them to remain silent at any point they deem appropriate to convey a salient point that should not be interactively questioned.  I leave it to the reader to judge whether this is a healthy direction for feminism to take.

Pitchguest reminds us that “trust but verify” also refers to people’s feelings… uh, minus the “trust” part, because you can’t verify that someone felt harassed. Because unless we show evidence that she left because of harassment, we can’t claim that she left because of harassment, no matter how much harassment we see involved, and no matter what her final post as a member of the secular community said. Therefore, “distrust and impossible to verify” applies to feelings. That’s why these guys never make any arguments borne of emotion, except for all the ones they make predicated on the fact that someone was mean to them by blocking them on Twitter.

#39 Pitchguest (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 7:26pm

Pandora3:

And pray, what was said to her? She claims was bullied off the internet. Really? Any evidence to amount for that? As far as I’m concerned, before she made these alleged claims she was busy creating a “third wave of atheism” in the form of Atheism Plus™, for which she would be at the forefront, and actively creating blog posts on FtB (Freethought Blogs).

If she can regularly dish it out like she did with her blog posts, as well as in her post about Atheism Plus™ said the atheist community is just a “boy’s club” filled with (and I’m paraphrasing) privileged old white men, who didn’t care about misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc, then I should think she should be able to take it when she gets dished right back.

So when was she “bullied out”? When she was “literally” run out of the community? Provide examples and cite sources.

And of course he’s right that demanding that people stop being homophobic, transphobic, etc., is “dishing it out” and being unable to take targeted rape threats, death threats and repeatedly having her physical locations revealed on the internet against her will is “taking it”. How dare she tell people to stop being awful to others, and expect people not to be awful to her in return!?

That is weak tea as far as incivility is concerned, though. Not compared to the well-poisoning when Elevatorgate again lauds Lindsay for “resisting the groupthink”:

#1 Hero on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 5:47pm

 

I have tremendous respect for you, thanks for your courage.

I’m not sure if Miss Watson is being deliberately obtuse or, if she is indoctrinated.

You have resisted groupthink – I hope that one day, Steven & Jay Novella can do the same. You are an inspiration.

Because our opinions are groupthink, their opinions are bravery and heroism. Why are they entitled to cranky missives delivered from bully pulpits without the least regard for who their audience is and what they are trying to achieve, why are they entitled to put a shiv in the kidneys of the people they claim to support, but our attempt at engaging in civil discourse is indoctrinated obtuseness? Rebecca’s first response was about as civil as I’ve ever seen anyone on topics like whether or not they should be allowed to have a say once in a while, to the point where I thought someone ghost-wrote it for her to eliminate most of the snark!

But remember, there was absolutely nothing provocative or confrontational about Lindsay’s bravery, whereas women posting about wanting a voice only do it for the hits:

#2 Ryan Grant Long (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 5:49pm

No no no, you’re missing what’s going on here. Skepchick runs on intentionally provocative blog posts and tweets. And as I’ve already said many times, PZ and Rebecca are perfectly happy to tell women and minorities to shut up when they disagree with them. I believe they genuinely care about discussing gender and working for equality like I believe opponents of marriage equality really do care about “the children” (which is to say, I don’t).

It’s not an alternative universe, it’s just vastly different intentions and goals. You seem to be trying to genuinely understand the issues under discussion, and you’re acting as if either Rebecca or PZ are honestly committed to the causes they claim to be for. Meanwhile, Rebecca and PZ are at best writing gossip and at worst trolling, riling up both their fans and detractors who eat this stuff up; their “feminism” is simply a cover and vehicle for these behaviors.

If you truly care about politics you don’t attempt to engage with the likes of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh expecting anything useful to happen. Likewise if you want to explore gender issues in any meaningful way, you consult real activists, social scientists and other experts on gender; not drama bloggers.

It surely is a good thing that Long was around to question the intellectual honesty of the people disagreeing with Lindsay about whether or not privileged folks should make an effort to recognize the people who are otherwise disadvantaged by happenstances of their gender presentation. Surely they’re the real trolls, what with their disagreeing with people. They’re just like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, whereas the people cowing others out of the movement with death threats and dehumanizing photoshops and never actually making counterarguments to anything are truly the Brave Heroes and the paragons of civil discourse.

#8 RefreshingChange (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 6:08pm

Get ready for more smear campaigns, Ron. They hate it when they get “called out”, and can;t get their own way.

No doubt guttersnipe Oolon will be here any minute to defend his chums.

Because the status quo of No Damn Uppity Feminists In Our Movement is a “refreshing change”. And here I thought calling people out was frowned upon!

#12 allison (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 6:34pm

An excellent response to Ms Watson’s characteristically fact-challenged blather, Ron. Thank you.

No need for evidence — it’s self-evident that Rebecca Watson’s rebuttals are fact-challenged. Trust allison, and don’t verify!

#14 Marc (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 6:39pm

Very well said.

What communication should be: Open, respectful dialogue between two people of differing opinions.

PZ and Watson-style communication: One-sided monologue by the less-privileged individual (or PZ, when inserting himself into this role), in which the privileged viewpoint is not permitted to speak, question the validity of, or request evidence to support assertions made by the less-privileged. When the privileged is permitted to speak, discussion will be thwarted with shaming tactics, foul language, insults, and generally childish behavior.

Based on their behavior, PZ and Watson are children, and you should never give candy to children.

WON’T SOMEONE FINALLY LET MEN SPEAK UP AGAINST FEMINISM? I’d like to know what Ron Lindsay has to say about this business! Zeus knows we’ve never gotten to hear from him on that topic!

Reap is his usual charitable and drama-free self:

#36 Reap on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 8:02pm

Ron-I’m pleased to see you follow up on your earlier post as needed. I expect we will see more childish and ignorant rambling from a certain click before the discussion is finished. How many times do PZ, Rebecca and their little gang of poser skeptics need to be shown their position is unreasonable? The simple fact that no one on their side will engage in a real discussion on the subject gives them away. It is laughable that PZ will engage with creationists but hides like a scared child from any discussion with atheists/skeptics who disagree with him unless its where he can control the conversation. Or he leaves it to his inept gang of socially retarded commenters. Otherwise he would rather brand critics as unworthy of his consideration and dismiss their opinions before he even hears them.

I’m afraid you were in the wrong place at the wrong time Ron. Rebecca has been without any drama and some of the blog site are seeing less hits.  That makes it time to stir things up doesn’t it? We can depend on Rebecca to cause problems, we sure as hell can’t depend on her to try and resolve any.

Yup, Rebecca Watson hasn’t done anything at all, like helping bring dozens of people to TAM, to WIS, et cetera. Not a single charity like a blood or vaccine drive to her name. Zero dollars brought in to various secular organizations, unlike the brave heroes in this comment thread.

Melody reminds people that none of these folks are CFI conference attendees, donating zero dollars at said events, and that they’ve been working the hardest at dividing the movement and driving wedges between feminism and skepticism — as though those aren’t the same damn thing, with feminism focused on skepticism about traditional gender roles and power structures in society. This should clue people in that they are not the revenue stream that any sensible CEO should be pursuing. But this entirely went unheeded, apparently because it was insufficiently dramatic.

Thankfully someone came along to rip off George Hrab’s character, and point out the real villain here: Rebecca Watson. Seriously, how dare she disagree with Ron?

#46 Rupert MacLannahan (Guest) on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 8:59pm

Sir, you and your organization took the idiotic step of inviting Ms. Watson as a speaker and VIP at your conference.  Any conference organizer that invites Ms. Watson (or PZ Myers) is a nincompoop.  This is what you get.  Slander.  Defamation.  Attacks.  Biting the hand that feeds you, etc.  Just look at how she turned on Mr. James Randi.  After she essentially called for a boycott of the JREF and tried to destroy that organization because it refused to kowtow to her every desire (no matter how ridiculous, like trying to impose harassment policies at skeptics conferences that would require everyone to abide by workplace modes of communication and behavior), anybody who organizes an event with Ms. Watson being even peripherally involved deserves everything they get in return.  It is like inviting a Tasmanian Devil to your event—it might be interesting, it might bring extra attendees, and it might even get you some publicity, but someone has a very good chance of getting bit.  And you, Sir, have been bit, and I predict that this is not the last wound that Ms. Watson and her sycophantic cohorts will inflict on you or your organization.  Now that you have called a spade a spade, and dared to say something contrary to Ms. Watson’s world view, you and your organization will now be on the receiving end of calls for boycots, calls to stop donations of money, calls for people to leave local groups, and so on.  The funny thing is that even a blind man could see this coming from a kilometer away.  You, or more likely some incompetent subordinate, made the big mistake of inviting Ms. Watson into your life and painting a great big bullseye on your organization.  It is lucky for you that Ms. Watson’s act has worn thin on most of the rest of the secular community, and right thinking people look upon her with contempt, if they actually give her any thought at all.

Thankfully, he’s super charitable about it. Not trying to escalate things one bit.

Nor this:

#60 Weeblo on Saturday May 18, 2013 at 11:07pm

Mr. Lindsay, the bad news is that you’re a skeptic who has gotten on Rebecca Watson’s bad side.

The good news is that this is practically synonymous with “a skeptic”.

Everyone on Rebecca Watson’s side is not a skeptic. Everyone not on Rebecca Watson’s side is a skeptic. Further, climate change skepticism is totes legit and climate scientists are climanazis.

Surely if you were at all interested in reducing the flare-ups in the secular community, you could start by getting rid of any of these posts for being too divisive, too uncharitable, breaking one of many of the rules-from-on-high that your vaunted Heads have passed down on stone tablets for us all to follow (except you, it seems). If you absolutely need balance, you could also remove all those ones saying that you’ve acted unprofessionally, or suggesting that they feel betrayed by your actions, or saying that they aren’t going to donate to CFI any more, because those ones are all obviously just upping the rhetoric and aren’t at all representative of civil disagreement or even measured disgust at your actions. Surely those are all just a witch-hunt, yes? Or must we believe that the ones disagreeing with you, AND the dramatic and divisive ones I’ve posted above, are all on par and they all passed your moderator’s muster?

Ron Lindsay, did you only work on the letter to insert the paragraph on civility, and that’s why you signed? Or did you actually agree with the whole thing? Your clarification would be helpful here.

Continue reading »]]> I ended up missing the last two talks of the Women In Secularism conference because I had to catch a stupid plane that was stupid ten hours earlier than I would have stupid liked. Stupid. Blah.

Okay, I’m happy that I’m home, and completely bloody spent, but in a good way. A mostly good way. There were a few nasty objectionable ragey bits, but that’s okay, we can all disagree here on the internet. And it’s not like disagreement with those nasty bits weren’t put front and centre on the stage through the entire conference.

Those ragey bits had a minor trend among them — several of them were expressly about how uninviting such a conference or such a social justice movement in general might be to men. In the one case, you have CFI CEO Ron A Lindsay’s opening speech claiming that feminists are using the word privilege to shut down civil disagreements or as a club to end arguments (without providing examples), and “cautioning” the feminists in the audience that men should not be told to “shut up and listen”. (As though only men did that.) We won’t talk about this poorly thought-out exercise in well-poisoning, this abuse of Lindsay’s bully pulpit, because many people have already expended far too many words (though here’s some excellent ones) about a man’s point of view during a conference attempting to expand women’s input in the secular movement. Suffice it to say, I strongly disagree with Ron, but making this conference even more about him undercuts all the worthy content from the women who spoke this weekend.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see one of the other ragey bits in person. During the second-last slot of the day today, R Elisabeth Cornwell of the Richard Dawkins Foundation presented a talk titled Who Speaks for Feminism. Kate Donovan was on hand to live-blog it. There were a few sticking points in it, but I’m most interested in this brief post (well, brief compared to all the other transcription I’ve done this weekend!), in challenging only one part.

I will reserve judgement on the exact wording of this part of the talk, but Kate transcribed a passage where Cornwell extolled the virtues of Robert Green Ingersoll, someone whose name had come up more than once during the course of this conference. Kate’s take:

The first wave of feminism was about getting the rights that we now consider unthinkable (in the West) to lack. Susan Jacoby reminded us that even old white Republican males can speak for feminism. Would Robert Ingersoll be welcome at this conference. Would he have been told that because he’s not a woman he can’t be here? [Me: WHAT. One audience member: YES! Rest of audience: NO!!]

I’ll further reserve judgement on who that one audience member was, but I have a suspicion or two. (Update: see Simon’s comment for an explanation.) Either way, they may actually be right, in a way. They may not, though.

I strongly suspect that Robert G Ingersoll, if asked to make a case for feminism and secularism, could do a bang up job. Sure, he was a “staunch conservative Republican,” performing oratory as entertainment back when that was the most popular form of entertainment, back in the days when Republicans were Democrats and Democrats were Republicans. Remember that weird flip in who wanted strong government and who had all the progressives and human rights activists, sometime in the 1960s, during the Southern Strategy, when the Republicans transformed into the party of the Religious Right? That flip inverted the color map of the United States, where the North opposing slavery, the party of Lincoln, was the Republicans and the South, supporting slavery states’ rights (to own slaves), was Democrats. The liberal northern Democrats stayed put, the conservative southern Democrats joined the Republicans. Also remember that the Republican party came into being when neither the Democrats nor Whigs had any intention of ever doing anything about slavery.

This fact drastically undermines the point Cornwell wanted to make here, unfortunately, that some political affiliations that are today blatantly anti-woman might be capable of standing up for feminism. Not that there aren’t real feminist Republicans — I’m sure there are people who self-identify as such, and might even manage to compromise one or the other to make those labels fit.

Ingersoll as a “conservative” was an economic conservative. He was a vocal agnostic antitheist, and easily the most vocal male feminist of his time in the West. As a white male, he was one of the privileged few able to voice opinions in his day. He was blatantly anti-corporate, supporting an eight-hour work day, even going so far as to demand equal pay for women. The guy was definitely on the side of angels about most things, even where he was still the product of his 19th century upbringing.

He also commanded practically exorbitant orator fees for his performances — almost a buck a head, back when that added up to real money. He made a good living off his craft, despite critics who were terribly irritated by his anti-theist jabs. He’d be a real moneymaker if added to any conference.

The real question that Cornwell likely posed, presuming that the transcript was clipped as it was a live blog, cannot “would he be welcome at Women In Secularism”, as there were many, many feminist or feminist-leaning men who were in the audience and most welcome to listen to the talks and participate in the socialization and even ask tough questions. I know — I’m one of those men. So, too, was Justin Vacula, who was personally welcomed by Ron Lindsay on behalf of CFI — though he evidently thought that “no harassment” meant “no socialization”, and kept his head bowed through just about every single talk, and I somehow managed to never see him outside of a conference room. So even anti-feminist men were welcome there (as long as they didn’t harass people). The question of whether a man would be welcome at the convention is mooted by the reality of this one.

The real question that Cornwell must have posed, then — despite the audience’s reaction, which serves as evidence against this interpretation — is whether or not Ingersoll would have been welcome to speak. I contend that he might have been a significantly better choice to speak than Ron Lindsay, given what they each had to say about the subject, frankly; if Ingersoll was the CEO of CFI, I’d expect him to set a better tone with his opening remarks. (Possibly using the word “bailiwick“. I love that word.) However, knowing that this conference was called Women in Secularism, he presents as the wrong gender to really help improve the visibility of non-cis-white-males at conferences in general. Chances are he wouldn’t have been asked, because he was already a popular draw and a man, not a less-popular woman, and that kinda cuts the whole conference off at the knees.

But I still think this is the wrong question. The real question should be, in my mind: “Would Robert G Ingersoll speak at Women in Secularism, if he was asked?”

Would he speak at a conference called Women In Secularism, knowing full well that he wasn’t one, if he was asked? I’d like to think, if he’s half the booster of women’s right to do work at the same pay as men, he would command his prices per head speaking at the convention, then show up and do Lauren Becker’s duties of keeping time and introducing the speakers. Or he might just sit down in the audience and listen quietly. I don’t know that we particularly have any pull quotes from his oratory that specifically support my hunch, but it seems like the kind of thing the wag might do.

But that’s pure speculation. I know, imagining myself as an orator of his calibre but every bit as feminist as I am today, that if I was asked, I’d say “hell no”. I’d want to be a contributor in subtle ways that emphasize the women involved, and not myself. Ways like liveblogging the entire conference, for instance.

I’m just sayin’.

Continue reading »]]>

What the Secular Movement Can Learn from Other Social Movements

with Greta Christina, Carrie Poppy, Desiree Schell, and moderator Soraya Chemaly

Soraya: We have marginal representation in society. Was known even in 42 BC, by Hortensia (look her up). Going to compare secular movement in terms of organizational and life stage development compared to other movements. Are we poised for success or fizzling out? Also will discuss secularism and social justice, combining them, what the pros and cons are. Marginalization of women in secularism and in all movements — dynamics, how it works.

[intros]

Soraya: Stages of social movements? Other movements you’re engaged in — where do you see parallels? Where are we in the life stages? Framework that seems most useful is “emergence, coalescence and bureaucratization”. Possible results are success, failure, cooptation, repression, or going genuinely mainstream.

Greta: Involved in LGBTQII for many years. Tremendous parallels between these movements — seculars are at ~35 years behind LGBTQII. We’re learning it’s important to come out if we can and to the degree that we can. Making atheism a safe place to come out into; making a community; not quibbling about nomenclature. Let firebrands be firebrands and diplomats be diplomats. We learned to play good cop bad cop, and that’s really effective.

We can learn from biggest early failures: diversity. Sucked at racial, gender, class diversity, and that harmed and continues to harm the movement. Set patterns that are hard to break; resentments that are long standing. Self-perpetuating pattern. If you wonder why so many of us are passionate about inclusivity and intersectionality, talk to anyone in the LGBT movement and ask if they could get a time machine, would they go back and fix the inclusivity problem? Most of them would.

Good that we’re having these fights now and not in many years. Embrace that.

Desiree: Labor movement — we were so effective that people have forgotten. 8 hour day, weekends, OSHA all came from that movement. Could learn the value of celebrating our successes. Forget to remind people how successful we’ve been, because people will miss out on how important the movements were. Labor is bureaucratized (e.g. unions) and mainstream. Celebrate your “militancy”. (I’m a militant unionist and haven’t blown anything up.)

Carrie: Thank you Desiree for the weekend. *applause* Friend Carol Glasser — her work is on how secular movements mirror each other. She says secular movement is in the “woman stage”, when they become engaged and become foot soldiers. That’s the do or die moment — if women enter, then the movement succeeds. If not, it dies.

Debbie: Was full scholarship at Catholic schools — Was in two different clubs at two Catholic high schools and kicked out — started philosophy club, writing wrong kinds of papers in religion class, asked questions like “do Vulcans have souls”. Got kicked out again. In university, joined groups and hung out with LGBT, etc, just to hang out. Fell into secular movement, joined every group in Philadelphia and Jersey, started in on advisory boards and student groups, they hired her at CFI to be field organizer and keep doing that. Didn’t know you could BE that. There is a thing, professionals can do that — learning how to be an organizer better.

Wanted to destigmatize atheism and promote rational thinking but didn’t think of it as a social movement at that point. Is it to be more involved in setting science-based policy?

Atheism is becoming hip — there are a lot of people coming out but not being activists. We’re not doing much yet. That’s like being mainstream.

Greta: LGBT community is the same — it’s possible to “be out” now without being an activist. Being atheist as out does have an “activism” component still. We should see vibrant social change movement 20 years from now. Being out LGBT person is still powerful, and it’s why movement has succeeded. Should become more mainstream and not so much a movement.

Soraya: Kinds of alliances that secularism can build with other social justice movements? Good context in terms of change is — my child was in school learning to talk about difference. Teacher was gay, started convo with “tell us what it’s like to be an atheist” to her daughter. And she was like “Okay! I will do that!” Wasn’t like that for me in school — nobody asked about being a feminist. That’s a huge change, happens because of alliances. Talk about benefits and downsides.

Greta: Alliance building, yay! Some say mission drift though. Huge areas of overlap — people who can’t come out of being a pastor in Clergy Project because wife would lose health care. There’s an overlap between secularism and health care. Religion perpetuates poverty, there’s an intersection.

Downside is it’s hard. Intersectionality is difficult, have to make effort to change and do uncomfortable things and take into account other experiences and you have to acknowledge when you screw up. It’s hard to try to be an ally when a hundred people are dogpiling on you telling you that you screwed up — but you HAVE TO DO IT, admit you screwed up. It’s hard, but you have to do it anyway.

Desiree: History of feminism — definitely a point in suffrage where it was a wealthy educated white woman pursuit, until they got working class white women involved. Historians say they wouldn’t have won if not for women’s suffrage. Sometimes that’s literally the only way to win.

Carrie: Have to ally yourself with social justice movements — that’s the goal. Goal is to promote happiness and end suffering. It’s inherent in any movement to trend toward social justice. Not popular opinion, but interfaith work is a great place to ally ourselves. Grew up a believer, and there was a stepping down process involving becoming a liberal religious person. Liberal religious friends were important allies. Wise to ally with the liberal religious. Downsides – very hard to get people to listen to you when you’re proving more than one point at a time. Good to think about what you have in common. As far as mission creep goes, I used to work with someone whose name I won’t say (HAH!) who would often talk about mission creep and my response was “YOU’RE a mission creep!” *uproar*

Debbie: Alliance building — being out gay person is different from being out gay person — often not “let’s make more people converted to our way of thinking” the way atheism is. Goals are different, other groups have interest in working with us is different and vice versa. With interfaith, people think they might have to swallow their integrity and work with religious people. Yet it’s crucial to accomplish political and social goals to make those alliances. We feel like we have to hide part of ourselves (not say “I think you’re wrong about Jesus”), can’t just hang out with religious people and tell them they’re wrong all the time. Sees why there’s problems making those alliances. But we’re both trying to protect freedom from religious right.

Sometimes gay groups didn’t want to ally with atheists because they didn’t want people to think “oh, Jesus hates them” — but Jesus DOES hate them… it’s hard. Considering values we have, we sometimes have to swallow some of this ego to accomplish these goals.

Desiree: diversity of tactics. Not that I agree with everything you’re doing, or only accept the tactics I agree with, but that you have a set of tactics that varies for different situations. When talking about interfaith or confrontation vs accomodation (which I don’t want to talk about at all) — sometimes we have to stop stomping on each other every time someone does something we wouldn’t do because it’s all really valuable.

Greta: Small thing to add — challenge to doing alliance group. Do they want to work with us? Atheism has a stigma right now, others distance themselves from idea that, say, queer people are godless. Need to think about how do we make that case that we are worth allying with? Easy answer is: we’re on the internet, young people, lot of us, awesome at raising money. How do we convince others to work with us?

Soraya: Key question because to Deb’s point, question of communication and framing these points requires a more systematized method of communication and creating messages. Talk about language of it, stigma associated with these words.

Debbie: Outreach dept at CFI talks about this a lot. Like the word secular a lot. In for us to talk about political and social issues with people. Downside is, when we say secular but mean atheist, religious right and mainstream Christianity don’t want to support a secular agenda because it’s atheist. This conversation should have been had some time before. Would have made sense for Secular Coalition of America to think about those names. Right wing newsletters are using secular as a dirty word. Like feminism getting the “hates men” name — but if we use any other word, it would gain the same smear.

Soraya: Necessary to form alliances with religious people who are secular?\

Debbie: Would benefit us to find people who support secular agenda, and defining clearly what we mean by that.

Carrie: Prefer the word atheist, because it’s the most honest. People think you’re pulling the wool over their eyes. Orgs might try to destigmatize atheist, but in personal life it’s okay to not use those words at all and not even use the title. Have used that tactic myself even while working organizationally to destigmatize.

Debbie: Work with underclass workers, standing on picket lines are boring, but often talk about being an atheist without using the word. “I don’t have a god” resonates though. If you build a personal relationship with people and if they think you’re great and yet you drop the “no god” thing, you might get people way more interested in you.

Greta: Using softer language, doing interfaith work, might be more comfortable for some people than others. We move the center. The overton window. We move what’s considered the center. Every social movement does this. We were talking about same sense marriage 20 years ago. But since then, domestic partnership has become the CONSERVATIVE point of view. Need to acknowledge that what word we pick, it’s not just the word they don’t like. No matter what word, they will still not like it.

We don’t all have to change minds but having the label and working with believers. But we need to build those bridges anyway, even though it’s hard.

Soraya: But what if “let’s say grace” might be offensive to you? That’s not really a question.

All: Yes.

Soraya: Per earlier quote, this is repeating pattern over millenia. See this over and over. We’re like Pavlov’s dogs, responding the same way to the same stimuli. Need to talk about contestation of public space, pushback against word privilege, in this movement, in others.

Greta: Large question.

Soraya: More specific? On periphery of conversations to do with women in secularism, with people on the virtual world, there’s sense that there’s something unique happening here — but I think it mirrors situations everywhere. As feminist online, I get rape and death threats, contestation of space very specific to feminism.

Greta: There’s a lot of pushback against feminism and these conversations in atheist movement, comes form lots of different spaces — from “why can’t we just get along” to “just stick a knife in your cunt”. One common one is “this isn’t special to atheism, why are you blaming atheists for this?” But these same conversations are happening in tech and sci fi and gaming worlds, and it’s not like gaming is a social change movement. Happen in movements dominated by men and women show up. Sci fi movement say where are the girls, they show up, and they’re not sex bots so they get harassed. We have the power to change this in this movement.

It’s like saying to Chicago PD “Well murder happens everywhere, why are you trying to focus on murder in Chicago?

Desiree: I agree, but I expect more from us. We’re so pretentious about being so much smarter — but why is status quo okay for this, when in every other area we’re supposedly better?

Carrie: Helpful to see a broader context but in this case it’s almost not. In this case it’s our family. Not helpful to point out family down the block is also getting internal abuse if you want to stop abuse in yours.

Debbie: Shiny educated white dudes living in suburbs in the Human Rights Campaign. Know why they chose certain spokespersons to represent HRC, and not “dykey lesbian types”; know they’ll be the people listened to on TV. Others were like “screw that system.”

Churches are organization spaces for African-Americans in 50s and 60s. Organizers were women. But they were picking men as top-level reps. But they were getting the word out. Women have been the organizers if not the top level speakers. Don’t know how that works for feminist movement but structures adn hierarchies reflected there.

Why do we see secular movements as special? Joining with social justice is not different — if we don’t move that way our movement will die.

Soraya: During Second Great Awakening, time of diversity, women, POC, radical experimental social change and utopianism — but out of that was borne many religions. Today when I look at religious media – which is successful, hundreds of millions are watching theocrats, we don’t have that kind of penetration. What can we learn from their success? They think of themselves as social justice advocates though we might not. But they are organized and effective. We don’t have parallel structures.

Debbie: Every time there’s article about black atheists on RDF, people rail against the fact that black atheists have to rally. That they don’t see race, that they don’t use emotions when they make decisions, that we should ignore racism and it will go away. One way Christians are effective, they’re not that arrogant about how they think. If people say “sway” they sway, but in secular movement, if you try to give group hug they’re like “what, I’m not listening to you”.

Some at African American campaign were like, “you shouldn’t be that slick or you come off as sleazy.” But we know if you put up the happy music and trees and babies in campaign you want people to vote for, and the scary music for “the other guy”, that WORKS. This is effective. We’re all being manipulated constantly by our inputs. Benefit from following leaders who say “we all think for ourselves” and we’re like “yeah we do!”, we’re all still fans of people, and we all still like people, and we benefit from recognizing that.

Greta: Saw talk once on difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are really good at walking in lockstep, but liberals aren’t, so we shouldn’t try to do that. our strength is in diversity and getting at an idea from a lot of different angles. But this country is changing, and demographics are changing, so putting the whitest shiniest middle-age-est white guy on stage is not going to make us more appealing to more people. Diversity of faces does.

Q: Is idea that being out is a form of activism stopping people from coming out re atheism? Little lifestyle difference between identifying as nonreligious or atheist. Another Q: same but for feminist.

Greta: Coming out as whatever — nonreligious, nonbeliever, atheist — whether that affects your lifestyle depends on your situation. Texans might see a difference, New Yorkers might not. Determines how other people see you. Support people using whatever language you need to for personal identity or safety. Lifestyle difference may have more to do with who you’re coming out to than how you identify.

Debbie: I’m canadian. *applause, woo* We just… don’t. We… When we look at America, we’re often like “holy shit, so scary”. We don’t have a lot of that in Canada. Gentlemen at customs was like “why are you going?” “Atheist conference!” “Are you an atheist?” “Are you not?” And we had half hour conversation.

Carrie: At least when you get beat up in the States you can go home and get health care.

It doesn’t bother me when people say “I don’t believe in god but I’m not an atheist”. I don’t care. Your lifestyle doesn’t really change when you change how you label yourself, it changes when you believe or not. Me, as person who cares about animals, you could call yourself an animalist. But you find limitations on language.

Debbie: Feel fortunate that everyone I know is an atheist, now. but it means so much to other people to see out atheists. Looking back in journals from long ago had trouble writing “I’m bisexual” and now I’m like “whatever, that was a thing Debbie?” Now someone has trouble with coming out as gay and I’m like “just put it on Facebook!” I’m really fortunate now. Never been to Alabama or Mississippi, and don’t really want to go. Usually don’t wear atheist tshirt when going through airport security because they have political power and I don’t want to screw with them. Being an out atheist is huge. Especially in black community. They might lose their jobs, might get shunned in their community. Implications of taking bold step.

Soraya: How can we address class if we hold meetings in luxury? And differences in being out in different geographical locations?

Greta: Luxury — yeah, that’s an important question. So happy to see model of student run free skeptical conferences, thank you Skepticon. Get that cons are expensive. Lots of orgs that use cons as fundraising — get that, but I do think that that’s not going to get diversity of class unless we find some way to address that, either with scholarships or free cons.

Desiree: Everyone gets class because everyone knows what it might be like to be really broke, so everyone gets the class issue in social justice.

Leftists were combination of upper class and academic class working together. Often doesn’t speak to working class people. Become about contracts and money and an academic pursuit. If we don’t offer anything to resonate personally with working class folks, we have nothing.

Debbie: Class is tricky. I think a lot of people DON’T get class. Think lots of people think parents will bail them out or can use dad’s credit card. Some people don’t get it. Maybe different in Canada — here it’s like “what’s wrong with you, why can’t you bootstrap, you’re lazy”. No health care here means one accident can wreck everything for fifteen years. Lots to learn from looking internationally for different issues.

Quick story: At two levels, was working at grassroots and at the CFI org simultaneously. Emailed group leader at university in Nigeria, asked if could write article about issues there. Reply was that they were working on workshop to get people to stop killing kids as witches, what are you doing in America? Reply was “uh, we’re working on getting God out of pledge of allegiance.” Can only happen on university campuses in Nigeria, safest places, and still people crash them and throw things around.

In India, atheist centre, big focus was training up magicians to show villages how magic tricks work so God-Men couldn’t steal their money. In Africa, same case. Here, we don’t do that as much. Avenues like Africans for Humanism. Focus shouldn’t just be on colleges — need to get into communities. Don’t just cater to elite and hope it trickles down to everyone.

Desiree: Do you think we as members of orgs actually ask people what they need?

Greta: Sometimes but not as much as we should. Feel like every event we have should minimally have feedback — what would you like? What would have made this better? Weird that we don’t do that. But how do we get feedback from people we haven’t reached? Arrogance about how smart we are than those dumb believers shows up in a lot of classist ways. So proud of fact that there’s higher incidence of atheists among college educated, phd’s, but what’s it take to get that? Time and money. It’s a class thing.

I get it when you’re a marginalized group, you want to prove how much better we are, how cutting edge, whatever. But need to knock that off, because everyone’s a potential atheist, but if we say how dumb they are for liking Country music or not having degree, they won’t want to be part of this.

Carrie: On point of how expensive con can be, important part is the videos. Adam Isaac filiming everything, doing a great job. Cons can be expensive, sharing that outside community via video can be great way to mitigate that. A lot more than our community might see these videos. Talks and panels should be forward facing, not just us talking to each other and ignoring people out of the room.

TAM has huge number of people who watch those videos. Each video has 30,000 views, and there are like 30 at every event. We need to think about outsiders seeing it.

Soraya: Need to ask bloggers to challenge on things, like cancer donation being reversed after call in from Ask an Atheist (Greta: no it wasn’t). Specific examples of outreach in local communities?

Carrie: Interfaith Youth Corps, accepting of atheists and agnostics. Don’t ever get people pushing belief sets on me. Convo is immediately about how to reach community. Some people automatically want to talk about Jesus but don’t know how to talk to people without that. Atheists aren’t standing up and going to hospices with them and saying we’ll do this kind of work.

Debbie: We don’t do service much in this community. That’s a class thing. A lot of black churches in cities would do a bunch of service stuff — raise money to send kids to camp in the summer. Food drives. All stuff I don’t generally see atheist or humanist groups do. How many people here are members of groups. Shout out things?

Blood drives, adopt a high way, food drives, abortion support.

Some of these are “hey everyone give money to a cause” or “bring food to meetings”. Go out and have a presence with small groups having an impact and doing some change. Go to a soup kitchen, build a house somewhere. Show we’re interested in helping the community. Suggest to groups to research local things to get involved in. A lot are run by religious orgs, don’t necessarily want to contribute volunteer hours to them, but there are secular ones. Show up in person, can make a huge difference.

Greta: Start your own. Atheist group in Carolina, little kitchen in park at same time every week.

Debbie: Also, single issue campaigns. You don’t have to agree with vast majority of what others believe if you want to work on same issue. Can build relationships that way.

Soraya: Closing statements?

Carrie: Thinking about how lots of people feel ostracised by other members of the community who aren’t interested in issues they’re interested in who say “that’s not my deal but I support you”, they say “that’s not my deal and you suck.” In high school I write notes to cute boy about why he should like me despite my overweight nerdy nature. They didn’t work. Instead he went around telling everyone how I was fat and stupid and sucked. After I went to college and lost weight, came back, he hit on me. That guy’s the idiot, not me. These people who don’t like you, who think you’re an idiot and a big waste of time, THEY’RE the idiots.

Debbie: Really excited to be here, talking about these issues, nobody’s like “social justice, I dunno, should we be talking about it?” People are like WERE TALKING ABOUT IT, HA HA. I like people doing stuff. Doesn’t mean I don’t like when people write about or talk about stuff, but doing stuff is great. Including creating forums online etc, but I’d like to see us all get more involved in real life in person. Tutor, eggheads. Work with after school, mentoring programs, etc, Like the coming together and discussing issues part. Sometimes there’s haters, and we look internally and get caught up with hating each other. There’s a lot of stuff happening out there too. Precious hours and time and money could be spent outside the movement instead of inside too. Lots of ways we can do stuff to change the world.

Debbie: All talk a bunch about how wonderful Scandinavia is, right? High rate of nonreligious. Also have highest rates in the world of union density. Intersectionality is not just atheism — there’s not just atheism, there’s also gender, there’s class, there’s all sorts of things.

Greta: Echoing what Carrie said earlier — when social justice movements get the women thing right they flourish, when they get the women thing wrong they fail. That needs to get out on the internet — it’s how we win or fail. Stop telling me to stick a knife in my cunt, but also stop TRIVIALIZING that stuff. *WOO!* Stop saying don’t feed the trolls. Stop saying it’s not atheism it doesn’t matter. Stop saying it doesn’t matter. It matters. We need to speak out about it, not just trolls on the internet but all the intersectionality. If we do this right we win. So let’s win.

Shout out to striking hotel employees. Tip.

Soraya: Close. Thank you all for words and experiences and great questions. Have a good rest of morning.

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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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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.

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How Women’s Concerns Can Best Be Advanced within the Context of a Secular Agenda

Moderator: Jamila Bey
Panel: Soraya Chemaly, Susan Jacoby, Amanda Marcotte, Katha Pollitt

Jamilla: Want to think about history we’ve already lived, bring forward women’s concerns about secularism. Love intersectionality — we will benefit from it. Will just be a moderator, 50/50 talk and Q&A.

Katha: Longtime atheist, feminist, left wing person, written many blogs.
Soraya: Write regularly for Huffington Post and RH Reality check, exclusive focus on telling women’s stories.
Amanda: Writer/journalist, feminism and reproductive rights are big issues. And atheism.
Susan: See last talk. :)

Jamilla: Look at Paul Ryan. Anti-abortionist “personhood” platform was contrary to rights of American women. How did that affect women going to ballot boxes?

Amanda: Personhood rights for fertilized eggs implicates all rights for women — can be used to criminalize bad pregnancy outcomes. Already see women thrown in jail for having stillbirths, could be very dangerous.

Susan: Class is an issue overlooked in America. Would prevent in vitro fertilization, practice only for upper class. Something that could be used to prevent babies in these ways.

Soraya: In conversations in lead-up to election, quote was used “these are the times that try men’s souls” — but every time that’s the case, they tend to be in the context of stripping rights from women. Used in context about rape. Ryan stepped in to say “Rape is another method of conception.” Need to think about everything implied by this statement. Based in shame, autonomy, control of women’s bodies. Short, pithy sentence that can be unpacked deeply. Reflects subjugation of women. That’s the approach taken by an entire well-supported party, and that’s problematic for many reasons. Important to connect idea of personhood to that.

Katha: Horrible rape statements by republicans like “lemons of lemonade”, “legitimate rape babies are shut down”, or “abortion is never needed to save a woman” — they did not win, but they haven’t changed. If you fail to win, you huddle and rethink. Strategy has to be more complicated than that for them, because they can’t give up certain baselines — because it’s religion. They do very well in some states where they have all three chambers unless judges stop them.

Concept of personhood is a religious concept. There’s no definition of person that includes a fertilized egg — doesn’t have any of the things a person needs like self-awareness, feelings, A HEAD… it’s just not a person. It has one thing that’s very important — “a soul”. Don’t know what a soul is but apparently you get one when sperm eats egg.

Scientific version is “it’s unique DNA, just add woman, and stir.”

Nature’s very wasteful, most unique DNA doesn’t work. Implantation isn’t even when pregnancy is set — now it’s several weeks before fertilization, just to be safe!

Jamilla: Want to argue the point. When we look at political moving re Repubs on marriage equality, republicans say “we’ve got to understand that things change and we have to accomodate”. shouldn’t they come over on women topics?

Katha: They should, BUT, being against abortion is about “murder” where gay marriage is just “perversion”. It’s not as bad as killing… a little fertilized egg. Used to be Repubs were more in favor of abortion than Democrats til some shifting happened.

Remember not that many Repubs have endorsed gay marriage — this is like two. Marriage is a conservative act.

Susan: Glad you mentioned the soul. Justices don’t get why people don’t all consider abortion murder. Religious people believe soul is what makes us human. It is what, why, the thing that enables us to consider ourselves exceptional.

Very important to these people that they believe that once sperm meets egg, it gets a soul from God, and that’s what makes it important. Catholic Church were opposed to condoms, but some priests suggested that it’s okay to prick some holes in condom to allow God to possibly carry through his pregnancy plan anyway. Gay marriage and gay sex is just perverted souls, but abortion is killing an ensouled creature.

Repubs are just as opposed to contraception as abortion, too.

Amanda: Half of Repubs voters are stalwart religious believers. Used to have elaborate debates about whether it was right to go into politics, e.g. to “go into the world”. Now Repubs ARE that religious party. If they give up these issues, their voters would likely give up politics. (“YAY!”)

Soraya: Consider the fact that men can’t have abortions but they can get married. Cultural power that men have at large is also true in gay movement. They have power to advocate for change that women (even woman gays) don’t have. This change is possible because of that power.

(Everyone thinks I’m Muslim. Grown up Anglican and Catholic. Nobody knows unless I say so.)

Notable about drones and just war — women don’t have just theory of reproduction to parallel. Catholic approach to personhood renders all other arguments for reproductive rights meaningless.

Katha: Not all religions are pro-life. Can’t say religious people are against abortion. Many mainstream religions are pro-choice, even including much liberal judaism. Rules against saving mother’s life by aborting aren’t necessarily advocated by all. Many say fetus becomes a life when it takes a breath.

“Beatrice” had anencephalic fetus — was trying to get a legal abortion in El Salvador, supreme court was completely delaying. Became as dangerous to have baby as to not. And they just delayed until it became easy to say “no, she’s too far along.” Amnesty International basically watching internationally whether she’ll have the dangerous miscarriage or the abortion, whether she’ll live or die. It’s basically only Catholicism that prohibits — most other religions have wiggle room.

Amanda: “Means of Reproduction” — hearing more and more horror stories about excommunication of 9-year-olds aborting rape, but rapists are still in good church standing. Evangelical Christians are making headway in South American regions. Catholicism is competing by being more and more hardcore, sacrificing women to show how hard they are.

Jamilla: Want to talk about other issues compelling women to vote. How can Secularism help move those issues forward? Obama made big show of Fair Pay Act. Churches have sway over women because of economic issues. We know women don’t earn as much as men for same jobs. How can secularism help women plead our case, and steer women toward reason instead of church?

Susan: How is the earnings differential a secular issue? There is a tradition of secular thought descending from social darwinists descended through Ayn Rand. Not only religious nuts like Paul Ryan believe in Rand. Secular men, atheists, also worship Rand. A lot of people think all atheists are political liberals but it’s not true.

Amanda: Women are shown over and over to be more liberal in values, eg. social safety net. Secularists should keep that in mind. Religion provides a social safety net; lack of safety net is one reason women don’t choose secularism.

Susan: Religious make strong case for social safety nets because “god wants us to help the poor”. Not to say religion itself does not thrive on poverty though. Among proselytizing religions like Islam, charismatic Christianity, where they are gaining converts are in the poorest areas of Latin America and Africa. But I don’t think you can say religion per se is for or against a safety net.

Amanda: I agree — but a strong safety net helps a society move in a secular direction.

Soraya: Useful to invert the question you asked — what does secularism have to gain from a feminist agenda? Theatre poster saying “Mankind: the history of us all”. Children said “mommy please don’t.”

Economically, closing pay gap, making sure health conditions are adequately covered, help women. Studies in Europe show when women have greater equality, secularism is lifted with that. Don’t think opposite is true. No doubt that “the movement” has not had a male champion of women’s rights the way Robert Ingersoll was. If we had champions of women’s rights like Ingersoll, we would see growth of women’s rights in society.

Amanda: More people care about feminism than secularism. Feminism has more drift than secularism here, really.

Katha: Why are there more men in the movement? Because women have a movement already, Don’t have to reject god to reject personhood amendments. If you wanted to be a political person, you’d be a feminist, though you might overflow into secularism. Secularism doesn’t have as many real-world implications as feminism.

Susan: That’s why there are religious feminists. Opponents of feminists call it antireligious. Though they’re sort of right, various kinds of liberal religious people also adopt and adapt feminism.

Soraya: Yesterday, Ron Lindsay identified capitalist patriarchy. Things like capitalism, patriarchy, war, environmentalism, toxic masculinity in culture — these are things that disproportionately affect women who tend to make up the bulk of the poor in the world. I write about transnational feminism. Hard without homogenizing people’s experiences to talk about these things that connect us all. People marginalize these women’s issues, but the root of a lot of this is denialism. Most ageless denialism is the denial of women’s full humanity. Has butterfly effects into everything.

Q: How to women expect to achieve even the most minor gains in this political society? You’re scaring the hell out of us Canadians!

Soraya: Turns out most women are against the whole rape thing.

Jamilla: Considering gridlock on Capitol Hill determines what our kids are being taught… where is the silver lining? Is there a glimmer of hope?

Karla: Was criticized on Twitter for modernization theory. Do think that things are getting better. Regions of the country are improving. 11% of the population controls 47% of the power. Unfair, outmoded. But young people are more secular, tolerant. Not as pro choice as they should be though. But aren’t on board with “old man republicanism”.

Now that we’ve had two foolish wars, we probably won’t have another until people have had a chance to forget.

Susan: “I hope you’re right.” Number of problems with the idea that the old white men control the power — the young win only if they show up to vote.

Looking back on decades since 60′s, struggle for social progress is long. It requires you to show up not only once when candidate when Obama shows up, but at midterms too. Forces that are opposed to science and women’s rights and government are going to make gains without youth vote. (Does not give me pleasure to give pessimist’s case despite critics!)

All this joy joy joy in the secular movement that the None’s are growing faster — can’t count on people who don’t go to church to actually show up in the secular movement! Could be Nones because of lack of exposure growing up. Baby boomers raised kids to know and be nothing about religion. Nieces think calling themselves atheists is uncool. It’s sort of what comes from being surprised about not being able to get contraception. While they’re secular, they’re not activists. Sometimes “None” doesn’t mean anything but “None” and it’s not good for social activism.

Amanda: Research for piece in Daily Beast about millenial generation — they shun labels, activism, kinda lazy. Otherwise they’re great people. Much nicer than portrayed in the media. We can work with that a little — they love technocrats, apolitical people. Can be moved by people like Obama whos’ a “policy geek”. We can work with that. We can show evidence, and solutions, and that might work on them.

Soraya: I think we all live in a feminist world — where women go to school, earn money and buy stuff and vote — so clearly things are changing. Life’s better than grandma’s. But it gains slowly. Write every day about sexual violence, demotivating. If you say to a young person “do you call yourself a feminist”, they refuse the label. Same with “atheist”. No labels, at all. If you ask “do you live with a safety gap”, they say yes we do. (Safety gap: difference between men and women’s sense of safety while moving through time and space. Walking alone to house, thinking of keys as something to open door or weapon to defend yourself. 27% safety gap between men and women in US.)

Over 50% of people in their 20s don’t know what Roe V Wade is. No, 40%. Don’t know the name of it, though might know there’s a law protecting right to an abortion. “Not a way to cross a stream.” Goes back to question of education.

Susan: Not knowing the date, more like. They don’t know the order things came. Thought when Roe V Wade was passed, thought there would be strife for a while then it would go away. But it’s a soul issue. What people like my niece don’t know is how close it is in time since Roe V Wade. 40 years doesn’t seem very close in time when you’re young. The closer things are in time, the more fragile — takes a long time to solidify your gains.

Dark times if you’re pregnant at 18 50-ish years ago. If you don’t know how much better off you are now, you’re missing important info.

Karla: If you don’t know that things CAN get worse, you’re in a bad place. When you CAN’T get an abortion despite Roe V Wade, you’re going back to being in a third world country with gigantic economic disparities. Occupy was maybe a little beginning, but people won’t take their rights being taken away lying down.

Amanda: Thinking about how people don’t know how long these battles are — contraception is also being threatened by religious right. Tendency to think in mainstream discourse that contraception is controversial, that they don’t notice it’s BECOME controversial again. Historical memory needs to be more important.

Soraya: Need to figure out how to take over Texas Board of Ed. *applause!*

We for some reason culturally seed these children’s brains and imaginations. Massive disconnect I can’t figure out. Write to teachers asking if they’ll teach Vindication of Rights of Women.

(Texas is a battlefield for education because of the textbook craziness.)

Susan: After Scopes trial, fundamentalists were alerted and brought out of hibernation that evolution was being taught in Texas. They went to the major textbook publishers and fought to get Texas high school biology textbooks to remove evolution. Those textbooks get used everywhere. New edition replaced Darwin’s head with human digestive tract on “Biology for Beginners” cover.

Fighting the same fight over and over because of culture in Texas, where schools in other states buy them too.

Amanda: Religious right is effective at organizing despite being minority. Everyone dislikes them, not just atheists. Had saying — problem with Baptists is they don’t hold their head underwater long enough. *uproar*

They only care about four or five issues, and they lobby incredibly effectively on them. They vote for Rick Perry, but don’t like all the evangelicals that are put onto school boards as a result.

Soraya: Media is so niched, segregated, self-referential, that we don’t get same info. Have to go out of our way to learn what info others are consuming. Spent a month trying to only read conservative media. Set up lunches with people I knew opinions were different — we tried to educate each other. Focused on women / reproductive health / justice. When said things like “you know what personhood amendments in reproductive rights laws made by republicans mean”, they say “that’s impossible.” Then you show them evidence, and there’s silence. “What are you willing to trade when you vote for a world where people with money are willing to sell away your rights?” You have to be open to information that you don’t get to have conversations; you have to be open to those conversations.

Jamilla: Come up with a closing idea for this panel. We talked about a lot, some need convention of their own to discuss. How do we talk to our sisters who are not American?

Karla: How do we tie secular movements to other worthy causes? Religion has done a good job of that. Though they’re willing to let “Beatrice” die, on death penalty, they’re great — so they get points for that from liberals. Are good on helping poor. I think whether or not there’s a logical connection between equal pay and not believing in God — seems kind of silly that there might be — but politically, allying with good and popular causes is a good thing to do. Feminism would be a good one.

Soraya: Every story counts, every woman’s story counts. Transformative power of internet on womens’ issues — organic growth in local feminist movement all over the planet, and through the internet we can support one another without becoming colonial. We need to share our stories — women don’t do that enough. Need to be told that their stories are good.

I got too angry to care any more whether people liked what I said. Positive feedback for that.

Amanda: Agree with Katha — tendency in this movement to want ideas to follow one to the next. Politics don’t work that way. You need to make good friends, and feminists are good friends to make. Have managed to get POTUS on our side in a way that’s never been the case before. Grabbing onto that would be smart idea for secularists.

Susan: We’ve got to become more active not just in taking Texas school board back. Need to remember our history, e.g. that America was founded as secular. Religious freedom is a secular idea. Nothing more important for feminists and secular movement than to be involved in education at local and state level. If we can’t exert the kind of control the “disgusting people” do now in education, we will fail. Ignorance is our worst enemy.

I wish Obama would stop saying “The American people are not stupid.” *laughs* Stupid meaning ignorant.

Right has been successful at capturing language. Important in an educational sense. They’ve made feminist a bad word. A synonym for things they don’t like about pushy women. Don’t think any feminist or secularist should ever say “pro-life”. Co-opting an idea. “Pro Choice” is the wrong response. Sometimes “Pro Abortion” is the right answer! Sometimes we ARE pro abortion in certain circumstances!

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Author of The Great Agnostic, about Robert Ingersoll. E-book called Last Man On Top.

Why the Lost History of Secular Women Matters Today

Excerpt of verse from The Liberator in 1837, to group of ministers scandalized by idea of abolitionism: called The Times that Try Men’s Souls. Maria Weston Chapman

The Pill was prescribed to her by her doctor to ensure her purity for her husband. Not all men at the time were sexists like in Mad Men, but it was still a huge fight for control of reproductive system.

Forgetting of history of marginalized peoples is self-perpetuating, cause and effect are the same. Not surprising that secular movement has been characterized by amnesias that held back feminism for so long. Secular orgs with loose, non-hierarchical structures lack ability to pass down history and ensure people remember history as it actually happened. Often subject to remarginalization in the next generation. Secularism, reason and feminism are not religion, otherwise there might be a treasury to pay these speakers at this conference!

Feminism and secularism intersect in many ways. Absolutely true that not all enlightenment intellectuals were feminists, but all feminists born at end of 18th and start of 19th century (e.g. Seneca Falls) were influenced by the enlightenment. Seneca Falls copied the Declaration of Independence — well, fixed it, really, to include voice about women. Government of men had traditionally ignored women’s issues.

Atheist/secular women were forgotten and written out of history. Largely unknown in suffrage organizations, because suffrage movements couldn’t afford to associate with them. Secular women, especially non-observent jews, played an outsized role in the 1970s which made feminists uncomfortable. Jewish women still played outsized role even as secularists. Hard to believe in a god who enjoins men to thank god every day for not being born a woman. Hard to accept pope who says women can’t be priests because none of the apostles were.

When feminism was pulled into religion, that was a form of accomodationism of the feminist movement. Feminism, because of misogyny of all sacred books, is naturally a secular challenge to faith, but feminism has a hard time marrying itself to secularism. Secular movement has had hard time accepting feminism as worthwhile.

Jacoby heartened to see so many men at this conference where last year’s was 95% women. shout out to Melody Hensley.

Why are there so few prominent women atheists of the calibre of recognition of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens? Secular woman activists have made most inroads in fighting Islam, but there are so few fighting the discrimination outside Islam.

Ingersoll rejected idea — article of faith — that women were intellectually inferior to women. Biographers failed to recognize that Ingersoll held a radical feminist view, beyond even suffragists. He sided with Stanton that religion was main cause of oppression for women.

Ingersoll resembled the feminists of the 20th century moreso than the 19th. Saw birth control as the path to women’s liberation. Saw that compulsory childbearing as a spoiler for women’s ambitions, both by religious right and individual men. Opposition to contraception was a control mechanism. “Women would never be truly free as long as they relied on the self control of men to avoid pregnancy.”

Questioned the ethos of those who thought that slaves were better than the free; that ignorance grows virtue. Ingersoll also said something presagely about Rush Limbaugh: “These men think of priests as detectives in disguise, and god the police”

Ingersoll believed that women lacked opportunity, not ability. They’re relegated to “the crust and the crumbs” of education. “When a doctrine is too absurd for the pulpit, it is given to the Sunday school.”

Not suggesting that what women need today is a man to speak for them — but that there should be both men and women advocating for women’s issues in the secular movement. For all social causes that are closely connected to secular social values, we need to advocate for them. Need more active women in the movement — there are more atheist women than we see in the polls, likely, because atheism is “a social pejorative”.

Stories of women afraid to come out because how much more her stigma would weigh on her children. Weighs heavier on women than men.

Intersection of feminism and secularism has been too often lost to history.

McCollum vs BoE of Champaign IL, challenging practice of allowing religious to provide religious instruction in classrooms. Key issue of this case was whether or not public neutrality between belief and unbelief was to be treated equally.

Not difficult to sympathize with mother in Texas after hearing that there was a family who was bullied, mother fired, and family cat lynched for being an atheist.

It is our job to restore the full history of women in the secular movement.

QA

1: Can Madelaine Murray O’Hair be rehabilitated into a secular humanist hero?

- Responsible for so many important decisions in school prayer cases. Problem is that she was THE image of the atheist in the 1960s — she was not considered a role model. She was not a humanist — was an atheist. But was mentally disturbed. Also, no accident that much publicity was received by Gloria Steinem — because she’s traditionally attractive.

2: Helen Gardner?

Wrote Men, Women and Gods. Interesting and important book. Socked it to all religions for their role in repressing women. Was on the side of Stanton and Ingersoll. one of those names that fell out of history.

3: Homework assignment: where do we find resources?

Read Gardner, Stanton, “Not For Ourselves Alone”. Don’t go to the New Yorker article about Firestone for instance. She was hardly the ideal feminist, but headline was “couldn’t live in the world she made”. Like religious folks pretending atheists repent on their deathbeds — idea that feminists are bitter because they’re unattractive, that they repent at the end of their lives.

Image of secularist as someone who looks unhappy in conventional terms is damaging. Important to keep this in mind when looking at positive contributions by these folks.

More forgotten: Shirley Chisholm. Hillary wasn’t first woman candidate!

3: Frederick Douglass was also an abolitionist and a secularist and suffragist — how much of a feminist?

He might have had other priorities. Will give him a pass on not making women his first priority.

4: Stanton and Anthony were friends, how did Anthony avoid the stigma?

Stanton downplayed her agnosticism. Was concerned about causing rifts. But Susan B Anthony begged Stanton not to publish book about secularism.

5: Vibrant non-western secularist history. If people won’t read secular tradition from their own languages, how can we help secularists from other regions?

- Don’t know. Don’t think that apart from making grants for scholars qualified to study this history there’s much we can do. Apparently a number of Indians heard Ingersoll and were impressed — his works were translated to native languages including local small languages. Would be stupid and patronizing to do anything but offer scholarly grants.

6: How will history look at leaders who stifle concerns of women because those concerns “aren’t as bad” as people in other regions?

– Depends on who writes the history.

7: De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex?

Not a book I ever like that much because felt it was dishonest in a way — explored psychological roots of oppression, but didn’t draw from her own lives and relationships, where she subordinated her intellect to men. don’t think it’s as great or foundational work as some people do. Doesn’t go far enough.

8: Role of women in anti-war activism (e.g. code pink)? War promotes sexism?

Revelations of sexual assault in the military — idea of culture of physical strength, that that’s what prevails, is a warrior culture, and that’s not good for women. Yes, I know, soemwhere in the distant past there was Xena: Warrior Princess, but these cultures are not good for women. Is it worse in military than other government departments? Sure it is. Physical abilities are highly valued, wars count as separate state where certain rules don’t apply. How was Nazi Germany good for women? Forcing women to be childbearers? Of course not so great for men either.

9: Going to have to fight this battle every fifty years?

Or in this case every hundred. I hope not. Taken aback by women in their 20s who didn’t know that unmarried women in 1960s would have difficulty getting birth control. Haven’t done a good enough job celebrating our wins. Has been so forgotten. Bad things happen when people forget and have to re-fight!

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Moderator: Greta Christina
Panelists: Ophelia Benson, Elizabeth Cornwell, Debbie Goddard, Stephanie Zvan

Greta plugs her book and her new sex-positive group.

Stephanie shouts out harassment policies, everyone cheers.

Ophelia plugs her blog, everyone also cheers.

Elizabeth Cornewll is an evolutionary psychologist, “on behalf of all women and my colleagues, I’d like to suggest it’s not a pseudoscience.” Applause.

Debbie blogs in several places and is big in CFI and is totally awesome (I might be injecting some of my bias here).

Greta: What does “gender equality” look like in the secular movement? What are your goals?

Stephanie: Believe it means more than just numbers. When we have gender equality, we’ll be able to have conference about movement and not have it start with a statement that says “those are all really good things but don’t take it too far.” *huge cheers* Gender equality is when you can be as cranky as the guys are. When you can screw up once in a while without it hanging around your heads and proving that women are unfit to lead. When we can inspire so many more women to just get out there and work.

Ophelia: Good when we can have a twitter hashtag without it being filled up with garbage by people who aren’t here, who hate the idea and everything it stands for. Without having to argue about it, to expect conferences to look pretty much like this one without its necessarily being called “women in something”, just folded into the movement and be taken for granted as belonging there. Seen as completely central to the movement, or the issues just not being talked about any more because they’re already withered away.

Elisabeth: Treat like Martin Luther King, judge not by the color of their skin — that it’s not just women, that it’s all of us. Extends feminism to all human beings, to humanism, because we all need this. Hearing stories of struggles of women in religion are moving. Need to think of the men too who also can’t leave religions though. Need to speak up, need to listen, that’s how we’ll reach equality.

Debbie: I dunno. (Good answer!) Have been asking other people — what would success look like? Great conversations, not one answer. Easier to compare it to “what would racial equality look like”, but still have no idea. There isn’t gender equality in the greater culture. There isn’t atheism and secularism equally represented between the demographics in US. Shouldn’t expect equal representation for different racial groups in atheist movement now. Certain challenges that movement isn’t addressing that are more important in the other demographics — at least nowhere near as much as “the ONE issue that we attract to the movement”.

Haven’t heard atheists say “well gay people, not so sure” though — we tend to treat need for equality as a given and shun people who are against gay rights. We don’t yet do the same for gender issues or race issues. We don’t make it integral to our beliefs that of course women’s equality need to be fought for — success might look like that being the case.

Greta: Haven’t touched on numbers. Is it to be 50/50? Is that an important marker?

Stephanie: We might not expect to see 50/50, but we should expect to see no conferences where NO women are speaking, which still happens. We need to see more parity with background population. Liberal religious people have women quite well represented — we need to pay attention to representation of women. Can’t go after numbers though. Address the underlying issues.

Ophelia: If there’s a drastic imbalance, that’s a sign, if you see that you should dig deeper. It often turns out it wasn’t just pure preference after all, there’s a reason for the imbalance. Studies of tiny changes turn out to change women’s attitudes to an office environment — even things like adding a plant might skew people to not dismiss a place as “not for me”. Can’t just decide ahead of time to need exactly proportional representation of women. But, if it’s very skewed, there are reasons.

Elisabeth: Understand why numbers tend to be skewed — have definitely seen a shift in last ten years in terms of young people and women coming to conferences. There are issues that face women and racial minorities that are different that men don’t face that way. Whether it’s PC or not, women are the caretakers, and because of that, need to do more to help women in families. Need to do things that allow women to give up religion and become more involved. Have given talks on evopsych about why women are more religious and it has to do with family. Need to help women be able to abandon religion. Where there’s social support, there’s less religion. We are a volunteer nation, and religions are the ones who tend to volunteer. Need to provide the support women are looking for.

Debbie: I’ve forgotten the question. *laughs* I got this coffee this morning… There were good points made here, want to highlight them. Word science was used, research, the plant thing. Our brains are dumb. We like to say “all our decisions are rational ones!” but they’re not necessarily. More research in getting women involved in STEM, getting good data, showing putting more pictures of women as scientists in science textbooks actually helps. Science shows that representation helps! If there’s an event, more than five speakers, they should not all be men. Trying to change conferences, to show people like them. If people say “but then you don’t get the best speakers”, reevaluate what you think is best. We join people because of commonality of experience — it matters to see people your age, your color, your gender, not homogeneous crowd of old white people. Numbers do matter.

Ophelia: refers back to Rebecca Goldstein’s talk. Greta: “Yes. Oh my lack of god.”

Greta: Intersectionality: when talking about gender equality, need to talk about inclusion of women of color, trans women, not just college educated women in the US. I’m not sure there’s a question in there. Are we too US-centered?

Debbie: Conversation with someone from Oslo, Norwegian humanist association is largest in the world with a population of 3/5ths of New York. Has more women than men involved. Things that they do are different than our atheist activists: a lot of it is community organizing, baby-naming ceremonies, “confirmations” for 15-year-olds, family involvement resources. Wonders if they have convos about getting more men involved.

Ophelia: Have a thing for internationalism. Have done her best to cover international stuff for people who speak English. Wonderful that CFI invited Maryam Namazie — hero for years! Brings more of a spotlight for women’s struggles around the world. Didn’t mention Norwegian government funding of humanists org. One thing focus on women in secularism can do is to bring attention to issues in other countries.

Stephanie: Let’s talk about head scarves. If we want to tell people to choose not to wear head scarves, women might be shot for it. We need to find a way to demand meaningful choices for these women, rather than suggest they just walk away from their religion where it’s not as possible.

Greta: Want to get positive. What have we already accomplished? Are we moving toward gender equality? What are we doing right if so?

Elisabeth: We’re seeing improvement, but we’re seeing in the general population as well. We keep a little bit ahead of the gen pop. Bringing young people into the movement is a help. Greater stigmatism for women to be atheist than men. Know lots of men who are atheist who are married to religious wives, never met the opposite (until meeting Theresa). But that’s an exception, because when married, they were both religious. Most women she’s spoken to, there’s more acceptance of men being atheist because in a lot of feminist writings I disagree with they talk about rationality being male and intuition being female (um, what?). Women are criticized for being rational and direct. Have been told she’s scary, but has to manage a department and she’s direct. “I’m really not scary, honest.”

Was expected to be a mother and wife, and if couldn’t do that, was to be a librarian, nurse, secretary, etc. Was discouraged for science. Went back and did her degree later.

Getting back to expanding to women, women of color, women in bad economic conditions — need to tell them that rationality is allowed. And please do it.

Ophelia: You could almost say doing the kind of thing you’re talking about could be seen as more of a guy thing. Have been talking about this for some while, have gotten in trouble for saying this. Has been seen as a fight with god, and god’s a man, and women are not seen as big and strong and angry and articulate enough and dedicated and motivated enough to take on that battle. Deep stereotype. We don’t want it to be this way, but it’s a strong unconscious thing that might cause people to think “it’s more of a guy thing”. Having audiences like this whittle away at that. Chip away at buried ideas that women aren’t supposed to “do atheism” by showing women doing atheism.

Stephanie: We’ve made quite a bit of progress. In the last year, definitely in last five. Things doing right: we’re complaining. Bernice Sandler was here last year, great talk. one of the thing she pointed out is that when women complain about injustice, they may deny it exists, but it may get better anyway despite the immediate response. That’s not the RESULT of you complaining, which might be a tangible improvement. Women atheists have been doing an amazing job speaking in atheism and academia and have been promoting each other over the last ten years. When someone throws a conference, there are more women volunteering, and there’s a woman on that board saying “how bout this person?” We’re doing things that are probably obnoxious, but that’s okay, it WORKS.

Elisabeth: One of the things we did wrong, and I’m going to take credit for this — we asked Ayaan Hirsi Ali to participate in 4 Horsemen DVD, but she had to leave, so she couldn’t participate. We need to do something similar to complete that series inviting Ayaan and maybe another woman speaker. It’s unfortunate the original DVD didn’t include Ayaan, which might have promoted that there are women in atheism. Audience: “Susan Jacobi!” She wasn’t on that con, unfortunately.

Debbie: So.. yes. Um. One example: The Amazing Meeting. Ignoring last year’s statistics for reasons, previous year was huge improvement in terms of women speaking, 50% speakers. That made a big difference. In the past we drew mostly from bestselling authors and professors and philosophers who WOULD talk about atheism. Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote about being one of very first black astrophysicists, so getting diversity might be tough if you only pick up the names with big degrees. See more educators, organizers, activists and bloggers in local conferences — derision about “just a blogger” despite writing thousands of words a day.

22 women, 47 men, 3 people of color for last year’s TAM according to an audience member.

There’s been change in the movement — look at the student movement. Apparently young girls/women involved — but Debbie doesn’t see as big a change as she’d like. Still see maybe 33% at student cons. Not many people of color. Still see lots more young people involved, which will shift as we diversify issues we address. Still a lot more to go.

Greta: We’re talking about affirmative action here — does that work? There’s a lot of pushback against it, like there’s a quota, which lowers our standards.

Stephanie: Plug for Minnesota Atheists conference. Almost ended up with full roster of women speakers accidentally, decided we needed to do that consciously if it happened (and really like Hector Avalos). Some are people who weren’t necessarily speaking all that long ago. (If they were, maybe board hadn’t heard them.) People are making an effort to get new speakers out there; young speakers, people of color. Happens even when that’s not something you’re trying to do.

Ophelia: Yes it works. If you’re only inviting Star X, Y and Z, next con says “we should invite Star X, Y and Z”. When you see people speaking, you’re more likely to see them as the right people to ask. You start to get people who have been invited 50 times, but not new people. Affirmative action works because once they’ve been seen, they might be seen as worthwhile.

Elisabeth: I’ll speak from experience, I work with popular speakers who are males, not going to go into details… conferences want to make money. Richard’s been around a long time, has earned his rep as speaker and scientist, have to give him credit for being a New Atheist at 70. This is part of the problem — as the base expands, it takes a while. So grateful to women who came before me. “Can I use a bad word? We’re bitches. I didn’t have to be that.” Mentored women who came after her, so they didn’t face the same challenges. To get them in and get them to speak. Women tend to be less willing to ask the questions “which is sometiems appreciated because people go on”, but they learn to feel comfortable with mentoring.

Debbie: How do we measure if it works? I’m an organizer. Do we see a change? If goal is to broaden the movement, we can reach out to other kinds of people than the twenty who show up at monthly meetings. With affirmative action, you get people saying “I dunno, is there a problem? I don’t SEEeeee race…” then wonder why their communities aren’t growing. People don’t think about why there’s no outreach. At cons — “Why weren’t there more black students here?” “Well did you talk to the black students union?” “Oh, that would have been a good idea…” Need to reach out to grow. We can do better and reach more groups if we think of more groups TO reach out to. Now we’re tabling at sci-fi/fantasy conventions and there’s a big overlap there (nerds!). That’s a kind of affirmative action. Need to try to find the people who aren’t so like ourselves.

That’s where the pushback against mission drift comes in. Hear that a lot as director of African Americans for Humanism and con planner. But it makes a difference to reach out to these communities. They won’t show up if they’re not invited. Need to sell products by marketing to other demographics. Shift the message, new people come in. It works with Mountain Dew.

Need to also include artists. Left out art talking about science, need more artists in. There’s a shift to include webcomics artists etc who promote science, that’s good.

Greta: Reach out and ask people. 50th American Atheists conf in Austin had huge increase of African Americans. Amanda Kneif was asked how they got so many tabling there — answer, “we asked them.”

What are consequences of not having equality?

Stephanie: Some of us have been living through this. If you’re one woman in a group of guys and someone comes up and says “hey, did you come here with your boyfriend?” or “women can’t think.” or “know that guy over there, the president or organizer who agreed with you? He’s just doing it because you’re sleeping with him.” Guys don’t necessarily see those things when they happen even if they’re happening in front of them. One of the things that’s been happening this last year is that men are now forced to see them. Women are coming out about certain transgressions to say “yeah, they were a jerk to me too.” Being a minority group, it makes a difference when you’re in the majority in a group. “I don’t feel alone here.” If I say something, women might say “yup, happened to me too,” and they’ll have my back.

Allows me to know I can step up, have support… at least for the good ideas. There are studies talking about a tipping point — what kind of percentage of female representation do you need for intimidating or microaggressive events to stop happening. There are a lot of strong women here, but we shouldn’t have to be so strong. With good representation, we don’t all have to be so strong.

Ophelia: Stephanie’s right but I’m goign to be Debbie Downer. One of the consequences of increased representation is that we become more visible and we become targets. We are on the upper slope, and because we’re having some success, that’s why we’re having to put up with a lot more shit from people who want to cut that success off at the knees.

Get a lot of comments from women who say “thank god you keep talking because otherwise I’d get out.” Worth being aware this is happening, worth being more numerous, but be aware that your not backing down in the face of that shit helps others.

Elisabeth: If we don’t reach equality, we lose. Our children lose. And so on.

Debbie: I was scared of being on this panel because “what? What are we talking about? Too broad a topic!” But now wish I had half an hour to say to each question. Greta: “Good blog post!” Debbie: “That would take too much time…”

Didn’t know what it was like to live in the suburbs until she lived in the suburbs. Once she did, she had shared experiences with other suburbs dwellers, could have conversations. We learn things we didn’t know before when we include diverse people, and we like learning! Improves our ability to think critically about things. For a Mormon in Utah, different perspective. Living in Buffalo, didn’t think I’d learn about Canada, because “Canada, what?” There are times that you do have to “shut up and listen” because you don’t know what others have experienced. *WOO*

Not worried about getting assaulted or street-harassed walking alone, because she’s not a small skinny blonde, don’t have that experience where she is, because people are usually like “Excuse me sir, pardon me” rather than assaulting her.

Need more people from different countries to get more experiences and make better decisions about these things. Without those experiences, we’re ignorant. And that’s all kinds of diversity.

QA 1: Can we help diversity by helping economic issues?

Elisabeth: Child care is a big issue, trying to improve financial ability for women to come to cons. Cons are expensive. Don’t see a lot of poor men here either. Most people here are well educated, have professional jobs. Now Richard even gets recognized by taxi drivers or luggage handlers or people walking down the street. How do we then reach these people? Supplement them with scholarships to students etc. Money is a huge issue.

Stephanie: If all your meetings are just big meetings in one place, even if it’s somewhere in the central city, there are a lot of people who can’t afford to get there. They might only afford to get education for their kids out in the suburbs, and can’t get to the city. There are different kinds of poverty we need to address. Meet up groups help, need to do ones where they don’t have to buy dinner and a drink, in various places. Diversity of events and venues.

Q: More unstable societies are more religious. Stable societies with good health care and education tend to be less. Are women more religious because their positions are more precarious?

Stephanie: Yes.

Elisabeth: Yes. This is why women go to religion — it offers free child care, support, family. In black communities, as Jamilla was talking about, the idea that all this support through religion has to do with economics. Families need support. Could speak on it for hours. We talk about herding cats, we’re a bit on the nerdy side, we say we need rationality, we poo poo emotion, but we forget that aspect of human behaviour. We’re changing. Have seen huge change in last ten years about “what do you think of atheist churches?” Ten years ago you “would have been shot in the head, or hung.”

Ophelia: Tragic irony in women turning to religion due to oppression — their largest oppressor. It’s like stockholm syndrome. Imagine what dinnertime was like in the house with three kidnapped girls.

Greta: Should we focus on eliminating gender binaries as much as gender roles?

Debbie: Workshop at TAM about skepticism and gender — feminism is generally a lot more accepting of people outside the binary, because a lot of the things that go into reinforcing that binary are systems that oppress women. Ripping off Amanda Marcotte now. *laughs*

As we move into being interested in defending same sex marriage, we see more LGBT identified people on stage. Don’t see much reinforcement in the feminist change of the secular movement of rigid gender roles. Had to define terms on workshop like “gender queer” and “gender fucker” with Dawkins on stage. Some people are interested in categorizing, some are interesting in smashing those boxes. For most others, they’re rigidly defined, and it’s important to talk about. Need to talk about how LAPD stop and frisk minorities more often so you can’t just say “there are no such boxes”.

Stephanie: We talk about the binary more when people try to put us on the defensive. We have to refer to research, and the research has to define gender. Because it has to talk about the big picture and has to simplify things, it sounds like we’re reinforcing those roles even when we’re not.

Greta: Okay, there’s more to talk about, we want you all to talk about things during 1h15mins to eat.

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Intros

Moderator: Stephanie Zvan
Panelists:
- Vyckie Garrison – No Longer Quivering. Ex Quiverfull, seven children, got out 5 years ago. Considered man to be head of the household
- Jamilla Bey – “You may not have noticed but I am an African American”. As irreligious, “statistically speaking I don’t exist”. At 4, realized compulsion to believe in Santa forced her to be good. Summary: Nonexistent black baptist muslim jew jehovah’s witness atheist.
- Theresa McBain – Exec director of a humanist organization. Came out as atheist at last year’s American Atheists conference, former pastor. Living as out is difficult. Working for change in Florida
- Maryam Namazie – *feedback, low mic volume* “God is against me today.” Name means prayer, muslims ask her to call herself Ex-Namazie. In islam, greatest humiliation is to be considered a woman. If people are challenged with death, then atheists will come out visibly and break the taboo.

Stephanie: As you discovered you no longer believed, what kind of separation / isolation did you experience?

Jamilla: Was disowned by parents (un-disowned now). Stephanie: “I don’t think ‘re-owning’ sounds any better!”

When one’s culture allows the narrative to be formed to be authentic is to be “something”, you cede that ground — forcing all blacks to be god-fearing to be real blacks. When Jamilla was disowned, she cried for her baby who was cut off from his knowledge of self. Husband’s mother was a racist bigot antisemite, projected a lot of her feelings on the innocent child (her husband) by baptising it to keep jewish side from wanting anything to do with him.

Was part of a radio documentary on black atheists, and was only one whose family would talk to reporter. Most blacks feel as though if they come out, they lose their families, and “aren’t black any more”. Feel intrinsic love for gospel songs for the community with family/culture, but might nod head grudgingly.

Vyckie: Mother saw what this was doing to her family, did not like the abuse and controlling, was very supportive, but if she kept with Vyckie, she’d have to give up Jesus to continue being close with her. Watches Fox News and almost everything she says is offensive. Have to let a lot of it go.

Kids are all ready to ditch the whole oppressive thing, were happy to latch on to her leaving the leaving. Suddenly kids are a little more difficult to control too.

Theresa: Similar circumstances — by posting to Youtube, lots of people saw simultaneously, and lots of fallout. A year and a half later, still seeing fallout when people are finding out and saying horrible things to her, sending shaming presents, doing the “I’ll pray for you”. Going back to home in Alabama, had to experience acrimony from all the people who knew she no longer believed. Didn’t want disbelief to be true — lost her entire existence.

Have grown to learn who she is, apart of religion, still learning how to live without it. Didn’t know anyone outside of that circle. Stepped off a cliff, realized there’s nothign there. “Well, you’re there. I’m not saying you’re nothing. Don’t tweet that please! In enough trouble already! Just tweet that I’m a wonderful person and my jokes are amazing.”

Have redeveloped a fragile relationship with family members after death of her dad. But there’s still uncomfortable silence, because rest of family is entirely about religion. Awkward when people’s entire life was to eat dinner then go sing the hymns of the faith. Distressing that husband is conservative and atheism is dirty little secret. *starts to tear up… I’m right there with her.*

Son said “okay, mom, I’ve been an atheist for a long time now.” Has even tattooed a red atheist symbol on calf. She can’t bring herself to do that — still has the verse about no tattoos ringing in her head. Other son is apatheist, fell out of family too, is collateral damage. Church hasn’t reached out to her now. “Have to make notes now… I don’t know if it’s atheism that makes you lose your memory, or… middle age…” One church member in band with Theresa sent last message saying “I’m not going to communicate with you any more, but I want you to know that you led me back to a god you no longer believe in… and I’ll hate you for that.” Painful.

Maryam: Islam has state power in many places. Being considered an authentic muslim involves being an islamist — wanting sharia law, veil, etc. There is no homogeneous culture anywhere. Dominant culture is of the ruling class and Islamism, but there’s pushback in many places. There is no one reaction to “I’m leaving religion” — surprising how many people are supportive and actually closet atheists. Father’s a muslim but doesn’t want to kill me. Crowd: “yay!” “I know, yay!”

Most difficult thing is there is no uniform response.

When at Humanist convention, was asked “we serve homemade rum here, hope you don’t mind” — it’s like a stamp that is burned into you.

Son was born in Britain, is being taught about Islam, was shown Iranian flag and wants to pray at lunches. Maryam “would burn the Iranian flag any time.” Why is he having Islam shoved down his throat?

Pushes identity politics, segregation.

Things are changing though. What’s considered culturally authentic — sometimes feel like there’s no escape.

Stephanie: How much did you find you had resources available to you, and how much did you have to build these resources yourself?

Theresa: When I came out — she was extremely isolated. Just knew she had to be honest and authentic, so chose a public way to do it, moment of insanity honestly. Not knowing she would be abandoned by essentially everyone, unemployed, scary. Was least thought-out thing she’s ever did in her life. Makes lists constantly. Yet she did this spontaneously.

Atheist community has emotionally and financially supported her even where church walked away and didn’t even check if she had groceries on her way out. Was taken in and given jobs and taken care of emotionally. Atheist community has been greatly supported. Is the only woman to come out of the Clergy Project so far “in case you didnt’ know — Jamilla’s black I’m a woman”

To be offered not one job but two — if you think about what Christianity says it does, atheist community actually does it. Has given her a soft place to land, and even employment in something she’s good at and loves to do. (Me: Sadly, I think this is an exception. Her story is great, but we could do better.) Was even given atheist of the year! As an ex pastor. Not because she’s a trophy, but because she was boldly insane and continues to share her story and tries to help others to come out too. She wants to pay the community back.

Jamilla: Want to give a shout out to CFI DC. Went to The Amazing Meeting with Surly Amy’s scholarship. Everything to do with atheism has had a community behind it. Debbie Goddard gave a great talk with legos (me: I haven’t seen it, need to source it!). Was able to meet other parents and see how much better behaved kids were (really!).

Lots of people just like you that you can have fun with, but even if you don’t drink, going to a bar and eat hot wings with others is great. Expanded this to include tacos, woo!

Easy to gloss it over that there are more divisions between political than religious differences in DC. Wasn’t a replacement for church, but once she started living in Washingtno, it was all fellow heathens helping and supporting and being kind to her child.

Vyckie: “I am so jealous.” Come from town little north of nowhere. Very Christian town. Family published pro-life, pro-”family” Christian values newspaper. Family was able to keep itself going quite well because they were very active in community. Helped DOMA pass in Nebraska (sorry). Was awarded Nebraska Family of the Year in 2003 by Nebraska Family Council (e.g. Focus On the Family). When she left religion, everything kind of fell apart. Didn’t move away with her kids — still had six living with her at the time. Though it was a downgrade in life needs — went from doing to the impossible to doing the overwhelmingly difficult so it was a relief.

What happened for her was, she was reading Alternet (uncle helped her get out, introduced her to it). Was doing that a year after she left, discovered the lit on “quiverfull”, read article promoting the book Quiverfull. This isn’t a title families actually take for themselves, it was invented post-hoc.

Got in touch with Katherine, explained that she was effectively quiverfull, and told story to her. She said “I wish I had you to interview before I had the book published, I didn’t have anyone to talk to who got out!” Was encouraged to create blog No Longer Quivering to tell her story.

“Did you hear about the woman who was quiverfull? She went stork-raving mad.” Aaah, puns.

Didn’t know that she’d be an example for never leaving quiverfull because of “what happened to poor Vyckie”. Even though Quiverfull is an extreme practice, encourages basic beliefs in culturally entrenched ideas like patriarchy. It’s all that writ large. Helps people see where it’s influencing their lives, on a smaller scale.

Writing was like therapy for me. Other women started coming and reading out of curiosity of “what happened to poor Vyckie”, and realizing that it was no longer working out for them either. Grew into a support group for quiverfull women who have been leaving the community.

Moms are weirdly driven to choose to be quiverfull — but kids were pressganged into doing the laundry, the dishes, cooking, home-schooling, being housewives without having the choice to take on that role. Lives were pre-packaged and handed to them, sort of like mommy training.

Loaded with keywords that quiverfull moms and kids might search for, like “courtship” and “modesty”, so they’d end up at No Longer Quivering.

M&aryam: Part of opposition group, socialist political group in Iran. Did refugee work for 20 years, had to get out after a time. Refugees are used to having nothing, supporting and sharing resources with each other. Didn’t find support and resource sharing with atheist and humanist groups. Found mainstream movements to be very pragmatic, in push to become more relevant in interfaith world, move to be less critical of religion to some extent.

Found it difficult with issues of islam, that people feel uncomfortable criticizing it even in atheist movement, because of charges of islamophobia and racism. Finds people will say “but I don’t know islam as much as christianity”, but it’s religion. When she feels at home, it’s with militant atheist groups. Shout out.

Support to anti-islam workers in middle east is abysmal. Four atheists in prison for being atheists, on death lists for being freethinkers. Discussing these cases (will have to get links for the four). mentioned e.g. Alex Aan, still in prison for being an atheist. Why are we not making enough noise? Would like to do last five minutes of her later talk to do public protest.

Q&A: not a lot of time left. Skipping questions on quiverfull — suggestion to just read Vyckie’s blog.

Q: Hostage threat. How to soften the blow?

Theresa: Very skilled at meeting people and talking for hours. Was talking about education system in Florida last night, with religious person, who asked a similar question and she had to be honest and say “I don’t know.” We need to be honest about it and say it exists.

Need to be more open about struggle it presents. It does create problems with family. Opening conversations is important. Don’t forget need to support the children.

SSA supported her son — referred to it as “congregation”, “DON’T TWEET THAT”

As most things change they change incrementally, little by little.

Will be emailed by “I’m a pastor’s wife and I’m an atheist, do you have resources for me?” Existing resources are insufficient for them. If we want people to come out, we need to support them. “Come out wherever you are” is great, but what are they going to do afterward?

Was on O’Reilly factor, doesn’t want to ever do that again, BillO was *scary*.

Found a hairdresser that’s a freethinker! Ladies, you know that’s serious business! Funny… but sad. How do you support families thrown into atheism?

“What do you do when you’re not in church and you want to get a bunch of people together? Is it a committee?”

Q: “Jamilla: your son, great kid, or greatest kid?”

Jamilla: He’s pretty great. He’s awesome. Super interested in NASA, is four, wants to work on Mars colonization project. Applause!

Q: Do we need to help parents help kids resist indoctrination?

Maryam: Parents are monarchists so she’s a socialist… worried kid will be religious because she’s an atheist. Level of indoctrination in religion that doesn’t take place in atheism. Finds it difficult to deal with seven year old son who comes home partly indoctrinated in religion. Children don’t have a religion, but it’s become impossible to not talk to him about religion when he comes home asking to pray before dinner. Says “if you want to thank anyone, Mommy cooked it, thank me, and the farmers who grew it, etc.”

Son was told that God exists — she says “no he doesn’t.” Doesn’t want it to just be something he was told though. Sometimes he comes up with “religious people are stupid.” Also never says that to him, because there are great religious people, and terrible atheists. Thinks it’s too much of a discussion for a seven year old. Difficult to actually discuss with him, but he’s going to public school not religious, and is getting educated in religion in England. Religious worship is compulsory in UK except in Wales, though it’s a secular society. Are constantly putting religion into children preparing them for adulthood to obey, to not question system or authority or God.

Jamilla: I’m pretty hard line — “Son — we are atheists. Nobody’s proven that there’s a God. People can believe outside, but you can’t come into this house telling us something you can’t prove.” People will judge him for his mother, but she’s demanding a scientific upbringing. She innoculates her child from religion like she does for disease. Is okay with people who are less hardline — will not have a child who is religious, but once he’s eighteen he can make choices. Won’t say “you’re in my house, my rules — where have we heard that before?” But will say “You WILL THINK. You can’t prove it? Mommy wins.”

Maryam: Good way to look at it — not indoctrinating, opposed to that. Why does my child have to be atheist because I’m atheist? No, children have no belief systems, they’re grown into them. Inocculating them with science, rationality, that’s a given. All parents should do that, religious or not.

When your child comes to you and says something about God, you have to be careful not to just give him things to parrot, teacher will side with child who says god exists and it will isolate him. Need to teach children to argue and be rational. Can’t assume kid will be an atheist, because “he is not mine to decide.”

Q: On balance, are you glad you came out?

Jamilla: Poor mental health conditions of MSM who don’t identify as gay/bi — first thought was “I could have told you that”. Being closeted is horrible. Can’t live inauthentically.

Theresa: Agree 100%, cannot live a lie regardless of consequences. Have been told she has a mental disorder that has caused disbelief. Or midlife crisis. “Where’s my sports car!?”

Close with Robyn Cornwell “All of you are true heroes” quote.

Miriam has the next panel while I work out my wifi issues. Pushing this netbook too hard, I think!