Every time I think I can finally put this issue to bed for good, something else absurd pops up and I just have to respond. Recently, Surly Amy went on a podcast to give her side of the story. That’s all well and good, she deserves to be able to air her grievances like anyone else so I listened to it. You can listen to the podcast here. The relevant portion starts at 6 minutes and lasts until 18:40 minutes.
By the end, my mouth was just hanging agape. And she dares call men sexist?!?!?
She’s had a mission for a while now to raise money to send women… only women… to skeptical conferences. That’s blatantly sexist in and of itself. If someone out there was raising money to send men and only men to TAM, she’d shit herself. But you have to remember that feminism isn’t about achieving equality, it’s about promoting “female issues” above and beyond anything else. She was quite proud that at the 2011 TAM, they had 51% female attendees. Is that really a number we should be shooting for, however? Yes, it’s about right for their proper percentage in the general population, but how about among skeptics and atheists? How would we find out?
We could look at the membership roles of American Atheists, for example, and figure out how many paying members are male and how many paying members are female. Is it 50%? How about other groups? Do they have a 50% male/female ratio? Let’s look at the Atheist Community of Austin or the Boston Atheists. Are they 50% male/female? How about Atheist Alliance International? The Freedom From Religion Foundation? Are they equally balanced on gender?
I bet not. There’s nothing wrong with that either. Traditionally, women have been less drawn to activist organizations. The only movement in American history so far that was primarily female was women’s suffrage. Otherwise, most of the people you see out marching in the streets are men. It’s not a good thing, it’s not a bad thing, it’s a true thing. Isn’t that what skeptics are supposed to value? Truth?
But she’s not interested in truth, she has an agenda. She made it seem like something went wrong when TAM 2012 female registration dropped from 51% to 17% but didn’t seem to make the connection to the fact that she, the Skepchicks and the rest of the radical feminist atheists spent an entire year screaming about how unsafe TAM is for women, because someone dared to ask Rebecca Watson out for a cup of coffee.
KILL HIM! Holy shit, we ought to hang him by his nuts for his crimes! They spent a year bitching and whining about basically nothing, telling women how awful TAM was, and when women believed them and didn’t sign up, who did they blame? They blamed TAM! It’s absurd!
Then she goes off and complains about people’s shirts and people’s handicrafts, how they made her feel bad. Boo hoo. Grow the fuck up. Honestly, with the amount of crap that the Skepchicks and their followers have been throwing around this past year, you should have expected some backlash. As I’ve said before, if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out. As for the shirt specifically, it said “I am not a Skepchick”. Well… she’s not! Skepchicks are specifically those who post from skepchick.org. Harriet Hall does not do that, her blog is at SkepDoc.info. There’s nothing on the shirt whatsoever that is factually untrue. It’s just emotional nonsense.
Coincidentally, last night I was watching some videos by The Amazing Atheist and came across this, which describes my feelings perfectly.
TJ has it right. Feminism, as practiced by people like the Skepchicks, is not rational. It’s not logical. It is sexism, pure and simple, wrapped in a thin veneer of calls for equality. This isn’t about equality, it’s about getting an extra share of the pie. They don’t want to be equal to men, they want superiority. They want to keep all the advantages they already have and snap up an equal share of power where they come up short.
Me, I want equality for all. Equality in everything. Equality in employment, equality in pay, equality in rights and privileges and opportunities. I want to live in a gender-blind society, where people don’t raise funds for women to go to skeptical conferences, they raise money for PEOPLE to go to skeptical conferences. I want a society where things aren’t quota-based, where every convention doesn’t have to be 50% male, 50% female, 20% black and 10% gay. It shouldn’t matter. People who want to go should go without worrying if they fit into the proper demographic.
Anybody who actually gives a shit about actual equality is going to think the same, but that’s not these people.
Let the hate mail begin.
