This is a response to Chris’ post: Why atheism is a rich man’s world – and how we can change it
I get it, women like being included, and that’s fine. Honestly now, it’s not like we’re excluding women in this faction. But! Before I get to the meat of Chris’ post, I just wanted to comment on a couple smaller pedantic issues:
Constant reminders consisting of everything from TV ads to misused pronouns don’t let us forget the struggle with basic civil and social rights that women have battled, past and present alike.
Yes, and consistently feminists all over North America are using these “reminders” to slam men every chance they get. But for some reason the sexism against men is completely over looked. There are ads in the Toronto subways right now for the restaurant Moxies. I hear a couple of girls talking about how “sexist” the ad is because the woman is depicted in a pretty slut-tastic dress and all her jewelry is being pulled to the man beside her who is wearing an outfit that would make him out to be a magnet. They ended their conversation with “the guy is pretty sexy though”. … WTF?
It’s hardly a secret that there just tend to be more men in science.
So is it because our “movement” is so science oriented that there are fewer women? Maybe we should focus on the arts more in our programming to draw in a new (and possibly more feminine […stereotype alert!]) crowd? Hmm. Just a thought.
This is one of the more unfortunate side effects of “new atheism” brought up by the (otherwise exceptional) lead of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris: the “big three” of non-belief nowadays.
I’m not sure that it’s their gender that is the unfortunate thing about these three men, it’s the lack of connection with individuals and how many people can’t relate to them that is truly unfortunate. What I’d like to see is someone who can talk reasonably about religion and life – but not be full of fluff with whom I can relate to. Woman or not.
Anyway, onto my real points!
The “new face” of atheism – as it seems to be called – is indeed very white male oriented. But why does this matter? Secularism in the public sphere is a somewhat innovative fad we’re diving into. Only recently have people felt comfortable enough to leap out and declare atheism as a way to brand themselves. Realistically, it just so happens that those who had the time and money to start this whole atheistic movement were white, well-off men. But the important part, is that it happened! And that it’s still happening! Now about who is running it.
Being involved with secularism, the movement, is a privilege. It’s a privilege that many people simply don’t have. It’s like complaining that you’re soup is too hot – people with another option can do it. And it seems like the people who did have this option, were white males, so they started this new stream of atheism. And it’s that, new… you can’t expect it to be a plethora of sexes and races when it’s barely accepted by the public at large!
But that entire point is extraneous, much like actively attempting to get women involved. It’s futile. The people who are currently involved are the ones who desire to be; at this point we should be attempting to get more people in general involved, not simply encouraging women to step into the movement. If I spent my time trying to get our women volunteers more active and encouraging them to be more vocal within our groups – I’d be wasting a whole lot of time where I could be doing more productive things like giving support to our already active volunteers.
Aggressively encouraging women to get involved is just like affirmative action. We start overlooking a plethora of capable people simply to be more inclusive. We look at a group of say 10 individuals, where 1 is a female…we ask the female to do the work simply because she’s a women and it turns out she’s the least capable. I’ve just wasted all of my time and invested interest in this person who is less capable than 9 other people, but I overlooked that point because for some reason we think that having women involved with organizations makes them more successful? Makes them more appealing? Makes us look less sexist? What?
Who cares what sex we have working with us? I don’t feel like I could relate to a woman Paul Kurtz any more or less than I can relate to the male Paul Kurtz. It’s reverse discrimination, as this unwarranted need for a closer male to female ratio requires the very discrimination that supporters are seeking to eradicate.
I personally think we have bigger fish to fry than putting energy into getting women involved. To be completely straightforward, I don’t have time to wave my hand at all the women screaming at them “Hey! Look! It’s fun! And non-patriarchal!” …Because those who want to be involved are already here, and are already contributing.
There is no “anti-women” sign on any of our doors. The exact same opportunities are available to women as are to men. When I’m looking for someone to fill a position, I’m just looking for a committed body and mind, not a gender. Why not invest our interests somewhere that it makes sense, like putting time, energy and money into art programs. (By stereotypical nature this would eventually lead to an increase in women, but that’s not the point.) It’s an entire social, cultural and academic side of things that we hardly ever touch on, but where there is a market for our mindsets and thoughts. Some of your are going to argue that women add more diversity, and different thoughts. …Any number of people despite sex, age or race are going to add diversity! I have the same opinions and thoughts as most of the guys in my little secular group. I don’t add diversity.
A social movement such as secularism is equal opportunity. If there are women out there pining to save the world from religion, teach other about science education or explore the paranormal they’re more than welcome to come on it. But I’m not going to waste my time convincing them that it’s okay to do that.
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“Because those who want to be involved are already here, and are already contributing.”
Then the movement will never grow, because we’ll just be preaching to the converted.
First rule of marketing is: know your audience. People are swayed by advertising. Its a fact. Whether its because of sexism or not, is immaterial. Both women and men can be sexist, so sad, like sucks, deal with it.
If we tailor our message to what people want, we’ll get more people wanting to be involved. If we ignore the differences in different groups its likely to alienate.
We won’t get everyone, but there is a reason why advertisers target their advertising to ‘demographics’.
Right now, the old white male demographic is something we’re good at reaching. Finding out what would make women want to join up….. in larger numbers… isn’t the same as quotas or affirmative action. Its simply good public relations. We should also be looking at what, in general, might attract cultural minorities.
And yes, we’re talking about stereotypes, stereotypes are about ignorance, but we’re talking about market research. Getting informed about what will attract a wider audience is not ignorance. Even if the generalizations are a bit insulting…. generalizations always are…. but if they are even moderately ‘accurate’ then they can be useful.
Joe – I think you missed the point which is that it doesn’t matter who we’re reaching out to. Women, minorities, whatever – the more the better. The current state of your so called movement doesn’t appear to be in the condition where putting time, energy and money into finding ways to get women is worth it. Having old white men isn’t an issue because this movement isn’t about color, race or sex. It’s about religion, science and reason. These are things that you don’t need women around for. And Katie made the point already, if women have a problem with there being a lack of females within your movement, tough shit for them. Why waste your time trying to make women who are too narrow minded to see past gender all together join in the fun?
Because I like women.
Being involved with secularism, the movement, is a privilege.
For some of us, it is survival, and we’ve been doing it our entire lives.
We start overlooking a plethora of capable people simply to be more inclusive. ..
First we’ll include all the capable guys, ’cause we all know they are all up on math and science and stuff, and then we might start letting in the second-stringers like those gurlz. Maybe one of them might work out.
A social movement such as secularism is equal opportunity. If there are women out there pining to save the world from religion, teach other about science education or explore the paranormal they’re more than welcome to come on it. But I’m not going to waste my time convincing them that it’s okay to do that.
Glad to know we’ve got your permission to proceed on our own.
Rather disappointing to run across this kind of jr high attitude on the first visit to Edger.
Hey – fisher. I’m a girl… and a girl who isn’t “all up on math and science” either, and I’ve become very productive and capable in the secularist world. I didn’t have anyone urging me on because of my gender. I was passionate about the subjects and threw myself into it. The people like me, are the most helpful ones. The ones that want to be doing this and the ones who are willing to devote all their time and energy to activities.
It wasn’t “giving permission” … It’s stating the fact that we’re not closing the door on anyone who wants to be involved. How is saying that a movement is equal opportunity giving permission to anyone? Chris said it in her original post – secularism is anarchist as it is, there is no one making the rules about who gets to be involved. I just don’t see recruiting based on gender to be productive or effective.
In junior high I had a very idealistic view about feminism being the be all end all answer to women’s right – it wasn’t until I started thinking for myself and left junior high that I realized that feminism, affirmative action, and putting efforts towards eliminating number differences is a waste of time. Not to mention that we over look too many people when we try to start including a specific group.
Wow. Good reply.
On the other hand, I think it’s useful, particularly for those of us who are older, nerdy white males with a reasonable income (I’m sure not rich!) to nevertheless keep in mind that active atheism can sometimes seem a bit boys-clubby, conscious or not.
By the way, just so there is no misunderstandings:
Katiekish is awesome!!!
I tend to disagree Katie.
I will give you an example that you probably have more neutral feelings about. I will talk about Latino’s, hispanic people, I think there are very few of us in Canada. But we are all over the place in the U.S. and well, we make up the rest of the western hemisphere. But latinos are extremely poorly represented in the secularist movement, in fact I think I was the only one in the CFI conference this year.
Even in Latin America, the secularist and skeptical movements are no where near their potential.
Do I think that Latinos just dont want to be skeptical, and that it would be racist against aglos to promote skepticism among those Latinos who just don’t want it? I think that its actually more a matter of promoting and growing an idea.
Norm Allen does the same thing for CFI with black people. The black community hasn’t exactly embraced humanism with open arms, but yet we still make efforts to promote these ideas across a variety of demographics.
I don’t think everyone who could really get into these ideas has been well exposed to them, meaning that its not that whoever is going to respond has already responded, efforts beyond our current sphere of influence are still worth making.
But I do think you made excellent points.
so is joe!
(mostly for fixing my sound system.
)
I do not believe this
I’m of the female sex, and I honestly never noticed that there were a “lack” of women in our particular group and the movement in general until someone told me at the 07 CFI conference that there was. We *really* need to focus on getting more *people*. We are nowhere near big enough to focus on putting our efforts into marketing to minority groups when we have trouble marketing to the majority. There is nothing in atheism or secularism that is inherently patriarchal, and as long as that remains the case, our first priority is to get more *people* to think about atheism as a possibility. When we are stronger, then we can concentrate on target markets.
Where can I find the RSS feed link?