Watching the furore

I have been watching the furore of the "atheist movement" cannibalising itself in the wake of various famous atheist authors revealing sexist attitudes and worse. Looking at them, as they spectacularly failed to stop for five minutes for introspection on whether they might just be getting it wrong sometimes and maybe a bit of listening to others might be in order, I read this comment at Butterflies & Wheels and it really struck home with me.

It makes me sick that the knee jerk reaction to a woman saying, “This happens. It isn’t OK. It needs to change” about rapists and harassers is too call her a liar and claim she’s just “doing it for the attention”. But when men in the movement say “This happens. It isn’t OK. It needs to change” of charlatans and religious leaders is seen as heroic.

It’s actually become an ongoing joke at my house for my husband and I to accuse each other of doing things “just for the attention”. It’s funny because I see it said of women complaining about misogyny so often it is absurd. The survivors of abuse and sexual violence are especially victim blamed and told they are “doing it for the attention”. It’s as if the people making this claim are saying that giving a woman attention and trust is a bad thing or that if she wasn’t milking this whole “victim” thing, nobody would pay her attention because she’s clearly too inconsequential to notice otherwise.

Women in this movement speaking up for themselves at all, from “Guys don’t do that” to “Micheal Shermer raped me” are reacted to as if they are launching vicious attacks as well as making excuses to draw attention away from men where it rightfully belongs.

After all, according to highly regarded, not at all sexist famous skeptics, women don’t like to speak up. That’s more of a guy thing. (If she does speak up, scream and stomp your feet until she shuts up.) Women, always using rape to get attention amirite? It probably wasn’t even legit rape. I mean, if a feeemale passes out too close to a Steubenville football player or Michael Shermer, what does she expect? She’s like a drunk driver, right? That’s just what men do when they drink, right? She shouldn’t have left her wallet in the unlocked car or something. She’s like a drunk driver. Conviction or it didn’t happen! She shouldn’t talk about harassment if she doesn’t want more harassment. What’s not civil about that?

According to several men in positions of considerable influence in this community we are not having a problem with sexism in this movement. We are having a problem with panicked, fuzzy ladybrained, radical, witch hunting viragos lying and making up offences to ruin men’s lives and steal their attention with victimhood powers, because logic.

Women should respond to that civilly?

Nugent can stick his civility where the sun don’t shine. This is not a civil conversation.

QFFT.