Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
If Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts runs for President in 2016, I would love to vote for her. She doesn’t make excuses about what we should believe in and I wish all Democrats would have her backbone. Speaking at this weekend’s Netroots Nation conference in Detroit, Warren laid out some values that Progressives need to have today. I agree with all of them.
Back on March 11th, Hemant Mehta, over at his Friendly Atheist blog, had a guest post by Kristine Kruszelnicki that attempted to give some secular arguments against abortion. Naturally Mehta received some heat for the post. However his need to ‘debate’ abortion didn’t include allowing a rebuttal from the group Secular Woman. I agree with Secular Woman that abortion shouldn’t be debated like some kind of flavor of ice cream.
Kruszelnicki’s post was a response to a comment American Atheist President David Silverman made to a reporter that there were secular arguments against abortion.
The secular community has been rocked by a firestorm over sexism in the movement. Blogs and tweets have flown back and forth between women speaking out about it and some men who disagree that it is an issue. Recently accusations of sexual assault have been leveled at some prominent men in the movement and at some conferences. Since there is such strong male privilege and a cult of personality in a lot of these groups, it seems these gender issues are beyond being fixed (at least until the current generation of sexist men die off). Maybe we need to have separate groups.
There have been plenty of articles and blog posts about the firestorm but not too many that examine the underlying issue of why it seems the sexism won’t go away in a movement that prides itself on freethought, evidence and logic:
As much as I get frustrated about the unnecessary backlash against atheist feminists, it makes me even more upset to see some well meaning opponents of feminism in the movement who fail to learn from history. Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry and the executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, points out the work of women on the front lines in the struggle of freethought in the last 40 years of the 20th century. Women have led the major atheist groups from the 1960’s to the present.
The second Women in Secularism Conference was held in Washington, DC this weekend. The conference is a response to the struggle inside secular groups to reach out and encourage more participation by women. There has been a vocal minority of mostly men who have taken it upon themselves to defend the dominance of males and male-centric attitudes in the various secular groups. This political “debate”, at times, has not been respectful or rational. It seems the President and CEO of the conference sponsor, Center for Inquiry (CFI), Ronald A. Lindsay decided to use his opening remarks to light a match in the vapor enriched environment then complain when he got caught in the firestorm. I would hope he has learned how a community leader should NOT respond to criticism.
