In this
Pharyngula thread over
here, a commenter
opined/wondered/(JAQ'd?) whether what he sees as the current atheist/skeptic focus on feminism/sexism is worth pursuing, and whether a shift toward "promoting women's issues" would undermine or dilute the movement as he sees it. As I didn't think so (and as the commenter responded once or twice - though not to me, as I wasn't the only one to object to his questions and reasoning), I decided to write him an
essay. Well, more than one. What appears below are my collected comments from that thread (assembled by commenter
ixchel and stored in the
Pharyngula wiki Sandbox for future reference). First, though, is the bit of the
comment that jumped out at me:
From my limited observer position there is a growing disagreement among
us about the direction of our movement. Some feel a major goal of the
rationalist community should be the promotion of feminism. Others feel
that such a focus is more of a distraction from other things we should
be promoting. I fall on the side of the latter. Not because I think that
women’s rights are unimportant but rather because we already have
clearly stated goals and we have not yet achieved them. We are still
silenced politically. The general population still lacks critical
thinking skills. Atheism is still very much misunderstood. The list of
problems we as a movement are directly addressing grows while we slowly
force this society to open their eyes to these problems. Feminism, along
with race equality, sexual orientation, access to healthcare, etc are
struggles we all must fight but placing feminism into this movement’s
umbrella as a focus is a distraction. One can (and many do) be a part of
the atheist movement while also being a part of the feminist movement.
That does not mean however that the feminist movement would place as a
major plank in their strategy the promotion of atheism. Likewise I see
no reason to make feminism a major plank in the atheist movement.
To which I replied (the below is from multiple comments
[edits are formatted thusly]):
Others have already pointed out their objections to your voiced
objection to atheist-inspired feminism as a focus-sapper, so I’d just
like to ask: exactly where do you get this point of view? How is one
part of the movement’s focus going to sap energy or focus from the
movement in general? During the civil rights struggle, there were many
facets of the movement including voting rights, property rights,
worker’s rights, education rights, the right to marry someone of another
race and myriad others. Atheist/skeptical activism focuses not just on
creationism/promoting scientific education, or fundamentalist oppression
of reproductive rights/bodily autonomy or effective sex education, or
church/state separation, or equal civil rights for nonbelievers, or
removal of tax breaks for religious organisations, it has many avenues
of attack to its existence – many heads for its opponents to cut off –
and those avenues often, but not always, intersect. Feminism/sexism is
an integral part of many facets of atheist activism, relating as it does
to reproductive rights, birth control, bodily autonomy,
Biblically-based sexual bigtory and so forth. How can it not be a focus
and what would be achieved by eschewing it? What major advantage could
be secured by leaving it to one side and what would you elevate in its
place? Could you think of another facet to atheist activism we could
leave aside to purify or better focus our attention?
Why, in your view, does the fact that atheist activism is multi-faceted and focused on multiple targets make it weaker?
Why can’t such issues as concern various atheists/skeptics and
their organisations be left to them to decide upon? Considering some
groups and people are much, much better qualified or equipped to deal
with certain specific issues, does it not make sense to leave tackling
those issues to those with experience, expertise and, very importantly,
the passion to actually make an impact? If you wouldn’t tell a
science-focused activist to bail on their passion for science because
you think church-state separation is more important, how do you justify
asking anyone concerned with feminism or sexism to bail on that and get
back to whatever topic you feel is more important?
Focus by _some_ atheists on feminism and gender equality at the
expense of other things they could be focusing on is a strength: as I
said, people whose passion and area of expertise is Subject A serve the
movement best when they focus more on Subject A than on Subject B (which
they may suck at
[and many activists, to their credit, admit that there are things they just suck at!]) or the more general goal of the movement – whatever
that might be and however that goal is agreed upon.
Atheism/humanism/skepticism is a very broad movement and requires
warriors on many fronts. During battle, a general will deploy their
best warriors to the places their skills will achieve the best outcomes;
as atheism et al has no one single general, warriors and their
organisations are able to choose their own field of battle according to
their skills, experience and passion. In this we behave more like
disparate, opportunistic guerilla cells than cohesive military units
connected through a central command: we pick our battles and our tactics
as the situation demands.
You seem to understand that a movement with diverse goals and numerous
fronts requires different approaches and areas of focus – you said that
gender equality is a by-product of critical thinking. But you contradict
that understanding when you say:
That does not mean however we should shift our overall focus from
promoting critical thinking (advances feminism), understanding of
atheism, and acquiring political power to the women’s rights movement.
Because noone is advocating such a radical shift of focus.
Feminism and gender equality are integral to the worldviews of a great
number of atheist/skeptic activists, are non-negotiable and are part and
parcel of their activism. For some people, humanism itself is
meaningless without gender equality. It’s not about a shift in focus;
it’s about refusing to avoid a topic when it comes up just because that topic
might be difficult or uncomfortable. That’s what’s happening right now:
a topic has arisen which is difficult and uncomfortable and lots of
atheists are talking about it because (a) it’s there and (b) it needs
addressing. Others are saying “No, it doesn’t need addressing”
[still others are saying "No, it's not even a problem"]. We are
disagreeing with those people. It’s here, it needs to be addressed. Full
stop.
You also betray your understanding of the movement when you say
we need a defined goal and a mission statement (you’re certainly not the
first to call for that, either). Working out what “our” mission statement would be would take more
arguing and debate and time and energy than we have to spare – you
yourself said we had limited exposure (and we certainly have limited
resources); no sooner would some nominated atheist spokesperson pop up
with a “Our Mission is X” than someone else would pop up with “Our
Mission is X with conditions and caveats and also some Y!”. The time and
energy that would be required to hammer out what “our” mission should
be (and subsequently following up the dissent over the Mission) and who
should present it could be better spent exactly where it is currently
being spent: on the front lines, in schools, courthouses, on the
streets, on billboards, on TV, in the press, online in innumerable
forums and focused on every subject any of us hold dear. In other words,
what we need to do is do more of what we’re doing.
Our movement is about social justice – for non-believers and for
those believers abused by their own religions. That encompasses so many
different things that it’d be exhausting and thread-hogging to list them
all.
Noone’s asking for some radical shift in focus that would detract
in any way from the broad goals of atheist/skeptic/humanist activism.
To claim they are is to draw a conclusion that simply isn’t warranted.
--
In conclusion, talk of diluting the movement, of causing rifts, of
And I also find it interesting that noone seems as concerned over other potential rift-causing focus shifts: why aren't more people, for example, attacking insidious creationism in public schools instead of focusing on Catholic coverups of child-rape? Why aren't more people focusing on the repeal of the tax-free status of any church found to be explicitly endoring particular politicians/parties? Why aren't more people focusing on the religious opposition to non-hetero marriage instead of petitioning the Boy Scouts to drop their discrimination against LGBT people?
I'll tell you why: because there's no one mission here; no central command dictating priorities. To repeat my military analogy, the atheist/humanist/skeptic/secularist movement isn't an army fighting another army; it's a disparate collection of groups and individuals, all sharing very broad areas of agreement but with different areas of expertise and different passions and different drives. We respond as individuals and as groups to those skirmishes or all-out firefights as demand our attention. Currently, there are many, many fronts and many of them intersect: this demands a flexible and multi-faceted approach if our efforts are to be effective. In fact, it is my firm belief that any attempt to limit the scope of any one of our "cells" - limit the range of our artillery - will have the opposite effect of what the commenter seems to think: eschewing feminism (or any one front) in favour of some allegedly unifying Mission Statement will just open a crack in our defences. Abandoning or even just minimising our activity in one area will create an opportunity for those who seek to further marginalise us.
A grandiose Mission Statement will not only fail to serve the movement, its implicit and necessary narrowing of focus will create the potential for targets to slip beneath our defences.
