Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racism?

[Dustnite]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

That doesn't mean however that I'm not going to speak out against misogyny and prejudice in other people who hold that view. Just because atheism doesn't describe anything about a person beyond what they don't believe doesn't mean we should just go 'oh ok, I guess I won't speak out against the misogynistic people in that group then'

I guess we got stuck talking past each other. I never prescribed anyone to stop speaking out against (insert here). The main thrust of my argument is that I continually see people trying to attach extra meaning to the word atheist and then make judgments based upon whatever standard they have created for it. We're honestly not disagreeing on anything here.

So far as I see it, the publication of books by Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett created a surge in popularity of atheism, this then lead to a wave of activism, and community both on and offline where more and more people started to question the existence of gods and religion's place in society. Call that what you want, but I call it a movement. It is a tangible thing that happened.

I still think atheism is more of an effect of thinking critically and being skeptical rather than the other way around. We're probably just talking past each other on this point and I'm not really disagreeing with you here.

If an atheist said they believed in ghosts, would you have a problem with someone telling them that they as an atheist should be more sceptical?

I guess that's the difference with me. I don't really give a shit what people believe. It only affects me when they take certain beliefs to political office and start making laws that DO affect my life. People can believe in the Sky Daddy for the rest of the lives and I wouldn't give two shits until someone tried to pass a law stating "we don't need to worry about spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor because the earth is only 6000 years old anyways." Now for me personally, I try to make sure I'm as intellectually honest with myself as possible and I constantly question the positions I hold lest I become too comfortable, hence the discussion we're having.

When I say an atheist should not be misogynist, I am basically also saying that they ought to be more rational as an atheist.

I contend that the label misogynist gets thrown around quite a lot lately in the blogosphere and I'm careful where that label needs to sit. There's definitely a case in TJ's sake and possibly TF's sake. Of course, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens have all been labelled as such at one point or another.

 

[Gnug215]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

What seems to be argued over here is some perceptions and distinctions.

There's atheism, there's the atheist movement, and then there's atheist movements.

A movement doesn't have to be a specific, hierarchical group, in order for it to be a movement. There's varying degrees of movement-ness.

The atheist movement may be a herd of cats each going their own way, but there are still enough commonalities to justify calling it a movement. Perhaps a movement of the lowest degree.
Within the atheist movement, there are other movements, and various sub-groups moving around.

Even if you as an atheist would like to disassociate yourself with any movement, you cannot escape the fact that there is some movement going on, and at the very least, anyone who is not an atheist will generalize and view it as a group. If you tell someone you're an atheist, all kinds of assumptions, true or not, will be made.

So is the movement misogynist/racist? Some of it certainly seems to be.

Are TJ and TF misogynist/racist? Maybe. Not wildly or openly, I'd say, but as Laurens says, they're certainly not doing much to distance themselves from the more extreme elements amongst their fans. They may not have an obligaiton to do so, but... why aren't they? They must be aware of the extremists. And they must be aware that while they might be going after the more extreme parts of feminism and SJWs, some of their shotgun rhetoric is hitting all over the place.

It's probably a bit similar with how it was in the "old" days when they mostly attacked creationists. Sure, they were going for the fundies, but along the way the softer tenets of religion as a whole got some hits. They didn't give a shit about that. They never clarified their views or apologized for going too far. And why should they? They had little to gain from doing that in terms of viewership and popularity.
I'm not saying they were deliberately inflammatory and generalizing just to get views, but they can't have been unaware of the effect that it had. Either that, or they actually hold some of the really extreme views that have seeped through the sides in all those videos over the years.

Differentiating between the two, TJ and TF, it seems to me that TJ is more deliberate and trolly in his actions, where as TF is more obliviouis in his lack of sensitivity and even-handedness. He is, after all, more of a hardcore science guy, more than he is the emotionally intelligent, empathetic guy. At least in his vids.

Anyway... the lack of tact, reason, objectivity, even-handeness, sensibility, empathy, etc. in their videos has helped polarize... everything they have touched. And it's not surprising that the responses and counter-movements have become so extreme themselves.


Polarization... it's a fucking pain. It's everywhere today. Fuck it!

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

I know that the only real thing that unites atheists is a lack of belief in gods, but I do think it's detrimental to the cause of secularism to have people like that championing atheism. Why? Because it makes people feel excluded. Someone might see people telling them that they are incapable of being as funny as men, or that their gender makes them less critical and be totally put off getting involved.

I do not disagree with much of what you said in the paragraph above the one I am quoting, but as I said, what can you/we do? Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris are as close as one could get to the "face" of atheism. Out of those three, Dawkins is the only one with a foundation (which I am not sure what it does). However, as I have pointed out before, there are atheist organizations, and they are not fronted by people like Hitchens or Harris. What can we do to promote atheist organisations that we support?

In addition, I have always felt that people that rap themselves up in their atheism are sad. Might as well still be proud that you found out Santa is not real.

But the biggest reason TF seems to be an anti-feminist, or opposing the third wave feminism, is as I understand it that the 3rd wave (or it's most visible part) seems to be anti freedom of speech as far as going to the UN, Twitter and Google trying to get limits on who and how can criticize them. They complain being harassed in trivial ways (and yes, there is a lot of non-trivial harassment out there too) while making an organized effort for getting the guy that landed a probe on a comet fired because he wore a shirt with women in it.

As someone that has been in protests wherein the police have thrown tear gas into the crowd to stop us from exorcising our freedom of speech, I always find it funny what trivial things people will call censorship. Do not get me wrong, I believe they are in the wrong as well for trying to stop all criticism of their speech. However, I kind of wish people would get as fired up about policing of free speech in meat space as they do about cyberspace.

[*]Due process of the law should be suspended during rape cases.

In the vast majority of rape cases, it does come down to "he said, she said." I am honestly asking, what do you think is the best way to handle this? I totally agree that all people are innocent until proven guilty, but how does one handle something like this? I honestly have no answer for that question.

Personally I don't think its down to TJ to say whether or not he was being racist.

A lot of really racist things are prefaced with the statement "I'm not racist but..."

When you depict black people as "thugs" who will "probably shoot" you, you might be a little bit racist.

Exactly right. Otherwise, Trump is also not a racist. Beyond that, I thought Martin Hughes went above and beyond showing that The Amazing Atheist was racist. How is someone going to say black culture is a victim culture not racist?

He pointed out the stats. How can we talk about these things if you can't tell the facts? Should we just ignore crime committed by black people?

It seems to me we're drowning in political correctness.

Who is ignoring the statistics? Martin Hughes did not, and he also went above and beyond by pointing out what is most likely at the root of it and some suggestions on how we (in the U.S.) could help fix the problem. That is something most people who just point out the crime statistics do not do. They say, "look, blacks commit more crime." When people ask them so what are you implying they usually go silent.

TJ criticised an insanely stupid vid (20 Answers to black people). The blog post at patheos is just rubbish. The blogger compared him to Ku Klux Klan. Seriously? I'm not even an American and I know the difference. The blogger must be living on moon or something.

Once again, Martin Hughes pointed out how The Amazing Atheist was saying things that would make the modern KKK blush. His mistake was in writing a blog post for his audience (most likely minorities like him) who know of the modern KKK. I knew that, but that is because I am also a minority, and I automatically knew he was talking about the modern KKK. He pointed out this mistake, since he never thought his blog post was going to make it huge. Pointing out the basic fact that the KKK is still around and they are not about picnic lynchings anymore, just keeping the race pure, and would blush at the fact that someone was saying they are happy minorities are moved out of their neighbourhoods so they could be recreated nicer for affluent white people is racist as fuck. Now, do not get me wrong, I have a completely different solution to "gentrification", but addressing a video to black people and not realizing that you are sounding worse than the modern KKK is terrible.

Oh, and a lot of feminists in the West regularly speak out against Islam, people like Annie Laurie Gaylor and Maryam Namazie

SJW has become a buzzword against people raising issues that some are legit like LGBTQ rights and people who use these words or phrases like "drinking the feminist/SJW kool-aid" aren't really making an argument.

I have to be honest, whenever I see someone use SJW as a pejorative (which is only how you see it now), I think of the 1960s and 1970s and how white people for the civil rights of the day were called nigger lovers. Honestly, how would being called a nigger lover or an SJW be seen as an insult? I would proudly wear both of those labels. The people that were called nigger lovers are now seen as being correct today after all, just saying.

I will add that some atheists have made sexist comments in the past (Dawkins, Hitchens) and I still find the content and wisdom they produced to be worthwhile. I would suggest that we need to look at the actual argument instead of coloring our perceptions based off past transgressions. We should only have to attack the argument, not the person to move forward.

Exactly. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Yet, I see this everywhere. As I said in one of my blog posts, I love Hitchens and he is one of my favorite people and that is with me knowing full well that he said some bad things about women. The way I see it, you will never agree with anyone 100% of the time, you would be lucky to agree with anyone 80% of the time. Simply because we do not see eye to eye on everything, does not mean we have to be enemies. Everyone that falls under the tent of Atheism (for the most part) has far more in-common than uncommon.

Per your OP, I am still wholly unconcerned with doing any type of PR work for the atheism movement as it's not something that really exists.

I wholly disagree with you on this. There are atheist movements, I listed two in my first post and could list dozens more if I wanted. However, you are correct that you have no obligation to any of those movements. I would also agree that the vast majority of those movements are positive and progressive, while famous atheist might be assholes, who cares. They are not the face of any movement, they are just popular assholes who happen to be atheists.

- Reason Rally
Atheists are in it, but the main purpose of this is to promote skepticism. Being an atheist is not necessarily a requirement to being a skeptic, although it seems that way sometimes.

This is a nit-picking point, but the Reason Rally was to promote secularism, not skepticism. However, it did seem like it was coupled with atheism to a large extent. So much so, that when it turned out to be a bust, I was commenting everywhere that they should stop promoting it as an atheist rally and fully focus on it being a humanist rally. Doing this would have stopped the asshole atheists from saying not to go, because it was not fully focused on atheism, but also promoted social issues.

 

[Laurens]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

I do not disagree with much of what you said in the paragraph above the one I am quoting, but as I said, what can you/we do? Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris are as close as one could get to the "face" of atheism. Out of those three, Dawkins is the only one with a foundation (which I am not sure what it does). However, as I have pointed out before, there are atheist organizations, and they are not fronted by people like Hitchens or Harris. What can we do to promote atheist organisations that we support?

However you might support any organisation I suppose. Donations, membership, attendance of events and so forth. The other important thing is to call out the de facto faces of atheism when they say disagreeable things.

In addition, I have always felt that people that rap themselves up in their atheism are sad. Might as well still be proud that you found out Santa is not real.

I agree with this, although I'd say that atheism pretty much goes hand in hand with secularism---which I'd say is the broader cause of the atheist movement. Whenever I put my atheist parts on, its usually over secularist issues. Aside from that I rarely mention my atheism these days [this forum obviously being a somewhat biased segment of the things that I mention day to day].

 

[WarK]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

As always the topic is more complex than I initially thought.

I'm reading the scond blog post, it makes more sense than the first one.

Meanwhile, Vihart has posted a new vid that I think is on topic or at least gives a time line of Black Lives Matter

 

[Visaki]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

As someone that has been in protests wherein the police have thrown tear gas into the crowd to stop us from exorcising our freedom of speech, I always find it funny what trivial things people will call censorship. Do not get me wrong, I believe they are in the wrong as well for trying to stop all criticism of their speech. However, I kind of wish people would get as fired up about policing of free speech in meat space as they do about cyberspace.

Well most of us live in a country that has pretty good protection for freedom of speech in meat space (though even in Finland there is some things that could improve). The Net is the global idea exchange, more or less, and corporations like Google and Twitter have actually more power than goverments there. If they get to limit free speech (well, more than they already do) it could have rather large consequences, as more and more speech is done over the net and those limitations would actually impact more people than government limitations. Sure the limitations wouldn't be as drastic as in meat world but possibly substantial if the net giants were to decide that some opinion should be censored. This is specially important for opinions that we disagree with.

In the vast majority of rape cases, it does come down to "he said, she said." I am honestly asking, what do you think is the best way to handle this? I totally agree that all people are innocent until proven guilty, but how does one handle something like this? I honestly have no answer for that question.

Mainly; badly. Without witnesses or evidence there is no good way to handle them, it's just looking at statements and deciding if they add up to reasonable doubt (for an arrest) and beyond a reasonable doubt (for conviction). The "listen and believe" which some people have taken up as a rallying call for the alleged rape victims is outright unjust idea though. Sure allegations of rape should be taken seriously and looked into in the law enforcement, but justice shouldn't be about believing the victim totally every time.

 

[MarsCydonia]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

In order to, I imagine, keep the controversy alive, the "Amazing Atheist" has uploaded a new video to youtube dubbed QUESTIONS WHITE MEN HAVE FOR SJWs!. A video where contributing youtubers include notorious (in the youtube community) anti-SJWs and anti-feminists such as "Cult of Dusty, Sargon of Akkad, Atheism is Unstoppable, Undoomed, Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, and others".

1. Why do you claim to speak for LGBT people, women, and ethnic minorities but when lgbt people, women, and ethnic minorities disagree with you, you harass them?


2. Do you realize that your war on language through political correctness has made you bedfellows with true rape culture?

In other words, Islam, the world’s most misogynistic ideology?


3. Do you want women to be equal or do you want women to be a protected class?

You can’t have both.

If you expect society to be treat women as equal with men, why don’t women have to take responsibility for their own safety?


4. What are you afraid will happen when you leave your “safe space”?


5. How can you possibly justify the idea that it’s somehow racist to disagree with black lives matter?

And yet it’s not racist when a black person tweets something like, “kill all white people.”


6. Are you aware the present is not the past?

Are you familiar with the concept of linear time?

Because you seem incredibly comfortable traveling back through time by talking about how bad things were for women, or black people, or whomever. And then by using some form of SJW magic, you then claim or imply that those problems in the past exist today.

Are you aware that this trick that you’re doing is not working? Why do you think that would work?


7. Why do you think that you can spend your entire life in a state of perpetual emotional immaturity?

Do you actually imagine that you’ll be able to stretch out your adolescence for your entire existence?


8. Did you know there are 13% more women in college right now than men?

So if the whole goal of feminism is “equality,” shouldn’t we have some men-only scholarships in order to equal everything out?


9. If feminism and egalitarianism are both about equal rights, than why does one start with a gendered prefix while the other one is entirely gender neutral?


10. What do you hope to gain by bringing back racial segregation?


11. When my grand-uncle was dropping bombs on London, did your grandparents get out of their bunkers in the morning to protest with signs that read, “Not all Nazis”?


12. Why do you think every cis white male is born racist?

Racism is a learned behavior.


13. How can you possibly say that the phrase “All Lives Matter” is somehow racist?

It sounds like someone the Dalai Lama would say.


14. Would you rather be right, or popular?

It seems like your primary objective is to score social points and get public validation.

You speak publicly in the same way that people write their dating profiles.

Stop trying to demonstrate how awesome you are, and get real.


15. So if a drunk man sleeps with a drunk woman, the woman is incapable of giving consent.

But the man is?


16. Is it really easier trying to spend all your life attempting to pacify the world and subdue all around you, instead of accepting that you are the person that has to change?


17. When I sing along with rap music, is it OK if I say the word “nigga”?


18. How do you reconcile your opinion that gender doesn’t matter or even exist with your need to invent new genders each day?


19. In your version of equality will white men ever have a voice in society or will white men always be too privileged to participate in discussion?


20. What makes you think that the power of censorship that you are so desperately trying to establish now will at no point be used against you?


21. Why is it that if a woman dresses sexy or even topless in public you support it, but if a female video-game character is dressed sexy, then you want her clothed more modestly?


22. What is your favorite song to sing really loud when you’re confronted with a different point of view?


23. Why are you afraid of dissenting opinions?

Your continued attempts to silence all opposition, either by smearing them publicly, or labeling their content as “hate speech” and having it removed, only serves to insulate your bubble even more and maintain your echo chamber.

It also prevents you from taking on new information and hearing different points of view.

Different points of view that are sometimes superior to yours.

Which tends to happen whenever I talk.


24. What is reverse racism? Like, what the actual fuck is it?

It’s just racism, right?


25. Do any of you people actually remember all the pronouns?

You know the list, right? The one with 76 fucking genders.


26. Why do you feel entitled to control what artists and entertainers are allowed to express?

Why do you think your sensibilities should be placed above the sensibilities of actual creators?


27. Have you ever considered that using the terms “racism” and “sexism” as haphazardly as you do to describe everything under the sun that makes you feel uncomfortable devalues the word to the point that it actually hurts the people who actually suffer from real racism and real sexism?

Have you ever fucking thought of that?

I'm sure a lot of you can easily spot the fucked-up nature of these questions.

Some in the group of contributors would probably argue that their question was not really serious but I have my personal doubts that even one question in that group was not asked with masked seriousness.

I thought about doing a response of my own but that's the problem with these types of "arguments":
One group wouldn't need to be convinced that these questions are symptomatic of deep problems within the youtube "atheist community", the other would blame the "SJWs and feminists" as being the problems and wouldn't care.

 

[Nesslig20]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

In order to, I imagine, keep the controversy alive, the "Amazing Atheist" has uploaded a new video to youtube dubbed QUESTIONS WHITE MEN HAVE FOR SJWs!. A video where contributing youtubers include notorious (in the youtube community) anti-SJWs and anti-feminists such as "Cult of Dusty, Sargon of Akkad, Atheism is Unstoppable, Undoomed, Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, and others".

I'm sure a lot of you can easily spot the fucked-up nature of these questions.

Some in the group of contributors would probably argue that their question was not really serious but I have my personal doubts that even one question in that group was not asked with masked seriousness.

I thought about doing a response of my own but that's the problem with these types of "arguments":
One group wouldn't need to be convinced that these questions are symptomatic of deep problems within the youtube "atheist community", the other would blame the "SJWs and feminists" as being the problems and wouldn't care.

Just about the answer them until I saw someone already did.

It is just part 1
Part 2 and 3 are linked in the description of the video on youtube.

 

[Visaki]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

In order to, I imagine, keep the controversy alive, the "Amazing Atheist" has uploaded a new video to youtube dubbed QUESTIONS WHITE MEN HAVE FOR SJWs!. A video where contributing youtubers include notorious (in the youtube community) anti-SJWs and anti-feminists such as "Cult of Dusty, Sargon of Akkad, Atheism is Unstoppable, Undoomed, Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, and others".

...

I'm sure a lot of you can easily spot the fucked-up nature of these questions.

Some in the group of contributors would probably argue that their question was not really serious but I have my personal doubts that even one question in that group was not asked with masked seriousness.

I thought about doing a response of my own but that's the problem with these types of "arguments":
One group wouldn't need to be convinced that these questions are symptomatic of deep problems within the youtube "atheist community", the other would blame the "SJWs and feminists" as being the problems and wouldn't care.

Those questions sound a lot like the "20 questions to white people" (and a few other bunches I've seen) in the way that they both sound trollish and generalizing their target audience. I suspect that is deliberate on TJ's part at least. The main problem seems to be that with both question sets there is a preconseption of the target audience that is expecting the worst so they both try to drum up publicity and controversy. People answering to these can just answer "I don't hold that view" to a lot of the questions. There will be cross talking with these. But those worst people do exist in the internet, for both sets of questions.

I found THESE answers to the questions. Those aren't half bad (though she totally drops the ball with question #11), but also show how people from one kind of culture (TJ's Americanized feminist scene) sometimes get issues from another (the person answering is from Germany). It shows that she isn't really part of the American feminist/antifeminist debate and doesn't really know all the subject that well (then again, neither do I).

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

People were taking these questions seriously? I thought it was obvious (from both who asked them and what they asked) that this was just trolling. Number 11 obviously invokes Godwid's Law and number 14 is asking if people would rather be right or popular. I must have missed the memo that being a SJW/feminist was popular.

 

[Gnug215]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

Welp...

Whatever argument either side ever had, it's been drowned in, well, The Internets(tm).

The trolled-up, polarized, clusterfuck-machine that the Internet is to any and all debate these days is an ever-recurring event/syndrome/whatever that really should have a name of some kind.

 

[Visaki]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

Welp...

Whatever argument either side ever had, it's been drowned in, well, The Internets(tm).

The trolled-up, polarized, clusterfuck-machine that the Internet is to any and all debate these days is an ever-recurring event/syndrome/whatever that really should have a name of some kind.

Yeap, that's very true. Specially if the argument isn't between just two sides, but the whole of The Internets™. Also it doesn't help that one of the sides is TJ, a person who wouldn't disagree that he is an asshole and very, very trollish in his style.

But @ he_who_is_nobody I'm not sure about the seriousness angle. I am pretty sure that TJ et al aren't 100% trolling with their questions though the way those are presented is aggravating and provoking clearly on purpose. For a true trolling you need, methinks, also a dishonest intent on not really caring about the questions or answers to them. I can't really say about the Buzzfeed questions of the one TJ was answering but "be honest, you hate black people don't you?" is about as trollish as an question as one can get. Not to mention blatantly racist.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

But @ he_who_is_nobody I'm not sure about the seriousness angle. I am pretty sure that TJ et al aren't 100% trolling with their questions though the way those are presented is aggravating and provoking clearly on purpose. For a true trolling you need, methinks, also a dishonest intent on not really caring about the questions or answers to them. I can't really say about the Buzzfeed questions of the one TJ was answering but "be honest, you hate black people don't you?" is about as trollish as an question as one can get. Not to mention blatantly racist.

I was never here to defend Buzzfeed (or any of the click bait channels on YouTube), and I am sorry if I came off as defending them. The only person I would defend is Martin Hughes, but I do not think he needs my help. In the same vain of The Amazing Atheist et al., everything those channels do is to create something people can click on to drive their views up and generate more ad money. None of them (The Amazing Atheist et al. or Buzzfeed et al.) care about getting answers to there questions. They just want the views. Sadly, controversy sells in our internet culture, yet trying to find solutions to those controversies never gets half as much attention.

 

[Visaki]

Re: Does atheist movement have a problem with Misogyny/Racis

I was never here to defend Buzzfeed (or any of the click bait channels on YouTube), and I am sorry if I came off as defending them. The only person I would defend is Martin Hughes, but I do not think he needs my help. In the same vain of The Amazing Atheist et al., everything those channels do is to create something people can click on to drive their views up and generate more ad money. None of them (The Amazing Atheist et al. or Buzzfeed et al.) care about getting answers to there questions. They just want the views. Sadly, controversy sells in our internet culture, yet trying to find solutions to those controversies never gets half as much attention.

Yeah, people tend to take things too much in face value and don't consider that people in The Internets™ might not be 100% serious. Not to mention people that even might mean what they say or write but do that in a provocative manner. Take TJ. He probably holds the views he talks about, at least in a general way. But he also sure as Hell thinks how he can get more views, more subscribers and more clicks.