Over the last few months I’ve given a few public speeches on how things said by some of the top front men in our movement are divorced from reality. Including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Boghossian. One of those speeches I delivered last year as the keynote speech for the Humanist Community of Central Ohio’s Solstice Banquet. A resounding standing ovation at that was reassuring. They have since put a transcript of that speech online.
The points I made were well received. Not surprising, as self-identifying humanists tend to get it, in a way nihilistic atheists don’t. In Portland last month I extended the argument even beyond, pointing out that in fact feminism doesn’t just follow as a core value of humanism, but is essential to any kind of movement atheism that expects to grow and earn the world’s respect. As well as make the world a better place, of course. But I understand some atheists don’t give a shit about that. Yet even the heartless “I’ve got mine, fuck everyone else” Machiavellian will have to admit, if movement atheism never grows very much larger than it is, and simply reinforces all the stereotypes of atheists as amoral threats to human welfare, who treat women and minorities and gays and the trans community so poorly it just stays predominately a white man’s club, then it will have strangled itself with its own umbilical cord.
At Ohio I already explained how critical thinking plus compassion entails feminism. And fully justifies a lot of the criticism feminists have leveled at movement atheists lately. I don’t pretend all of it is justified (I haven’t even seen all of it), but enough of it is to warrant our attention. That speech was titled Oh No! Humanism Means Stuff! Why Compassion + Critical Thought = Feminism. I’m reproducing the whole transcript here with minor edits and more formatting and hyperlinks. Tomorrow I’ll post some additional material from my Portland speech, in which I examine Peter Boghossian’s remarks about gay pride and his hobnobbing with infamous misogynist Stefan Molyneux. But first, here is the Ohio speech…
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Introduction
When I asked the organizers of this event what I should speak on, they said, oooh, something about humanism and philosophy and critical thinking. You know, something that’s about celebrating who we are, and bringing our community together.
That was a bit vague. Thanks.
But hey, challenge accepted!
So I thought about it. And you know what actually hits every item of that request?
Feminism!
Yeah. That’s right. I’m going to talk about feminism. Those who take offense at that had better leave now. You can send your death threats through the contact form at www.fbi.gov.
I’ve been researching and writing about feminism for several years now, and I’ve been an outspoken feminist ever since I started reading modern feminist authors over twenty years ago, when I was in military training to hunt submarines for the United States Coast Guard. And yes, the military made me a feminist. (If you’re interested in that, my talk about it is online.)
I’m well aware that someone might say, “Hey, this is supposed to be a speech about bringing our community together. Surely feminism is too divisive for that!”
That it should even be divisive, though, is precisely the problem I want to address, and that has to be addressed if we really want to bring our community together. And certainly if we want to celebrate our humanist values.
Feminist causes abound in this country, from fighting for women’s rights in health care, abortion, birth control, and sex education, to combating the sexist abuse and mistreatment of women throughout our social system, which we find everywhere, from the internet to the street, from the office to the home. You can find plenty to read now online about the disproportionate way that even in our own American society women are harassed or assaulted, or regarded as liars, or their thoughts or concerns ignored. And how they are subjected to an oppressive culture of double standards, being asked to act more like men, then socially punished the moment they do so.
Numerous scientific studies show that women are even treated as inferior by educational institutions and hiring committees that don’t even realize they are doing it. For example, several studies show [e.g. this and this and this and these] that merely replacing a man’s name with a woman’s name on a resume can cause a lower chance of being hired, and a higher chance of getting a lower pay offer. In another study, over two hundred performance reviews from 28 major companies were examined, and among various sexist disparities was this finding:
[The word] abrasive … was used 17 times to describe 13 different women, but the word never appeared in men’s reviews. In fact, this type of character critique that was absent from men’s reviews showed up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women.
The evidence indicated that when men engaged in essentially the same behavior, they were praised for it. This disparity was probably not even conscious. And yet it certainly must cause women measurable financial harm, by increasing their rate of dismissal, decreasing their rate of promotion, and negatively affecting their pay scale. All for doing exactly what those same employers reward and expect from men. In other words, they are being punished simply for being women. [Many other studies confirm this.] [Such as this. And this. And this. And this.]
Combine numerous things like that, with everything else—suppressing reproductive rights, street harassment, internet harassment, magnified risk of sexual assault, disparities in treatment even in casual social situations—and this can no longer be regarded as trivial. Even if each of these injustices were to be regarded as small, their cumulative effect is large.
And these are not just feminist causes. These are humanist causes.
Fear of Feminism
One of the coolest things I saw recently—and hat tip to the Skepchick blog network, which I follow regularly and highly recommend—was a video interview with Terry Crews about why he is an outspoken feminist. And if you don’t know who I mean, I mean the actor, author, and ex-football star. He’s currently one of the funniest members of the cast on the TV show Brooklynn 99. If you’ve seen him, you might swear on a statistics textbook that he’d be the last guy to say he was a feminist. He’s a gargantuan black man with an incredibly built body. His biceps alone are thicker than my chest [a fact often used for comic impact on B99]. He’s starred in action movies. He played pro football. Feminist.
In the interview, he gives astute observations on feminism and gender theory, and fully cops to being a feminist. So he was asked why so many men and women are afraid of the word, afraid of calling themselves feminists, and Crews said he thought it was because people fear losing control. And feminism means you have to share power, and influence, and importance, and opportunities. It means women get to criticize men as much as men criticize women. It means women’s voices have an equal chance of overriding a man’s. It means a woman can get your job.
Creating an equal society means those who have been enjoying an unfair excess of preferences and privileges have to start sharing those preferences and privileges, and thus won’t have advantages anymore. That’s scary. Especially if you’ve been taught all your life that you aren’t a man if you aren’t on top, if you aren’t in charge, if you aren’t more important than everybody else. If you profess to believe in equality, then you may have to give up some power and influence, when you have an unfair share of it.
That’s the gist of his point. But Crews was answering mostly with respect to men being scared of feminism, the same way Republicans are scared of socialized health care. And the response to that fear is the same: they fabricate elaborate and false mythologies about the thing they fear, and actively try to push that narrative on everyone else. Which is why even some women end up buying into it, in just the same way some among the poor buy into the Republican myths about socialized healthcare, and thus end up fighting something that could actually help lift them out of poverty, while supporting corporate welfare for the rich.
Notice the themes here. Mythologies. Assertively spread. Bringing widespread harm to the welfare of humanity. Sound familiar? The enemies of feminism, in fact, do the same thing the enemies of atheists do: make shit up, and claim we are awful, and will ruin the world if anyone listens to us. The enemies of feminism, are the enemies of humanism.
The core values of humanism are the exercise of compassion toward bettering the lives of all human beings, and doing that critically, evidentially, and with a passionate concern for the truth. And that requires fighting all the social and cultural assumptions that get in the way of that goal, regardless of whether those assumptions are explicitly religious or not. So when women as a class are not treated with the same respect or concern as men, and when lies and false beliefs are deployed to accomplish or maintain that status quo, that is precisely the sort of thing humanism must oppose.
If you are like several people I know, you might not want to call yourself a feminist, because you are scared of how you will be treated, about the bigoted false assumptions people will then immediately attach to you. And that’s a lot like atheists, who are often scared of calling themselves atheists for exactly the same reasons. But of course, they are atheists all the same. They don’t believe in a god. They are, quite simply, not theists. Similarly—just like closeted atheists—if you support the cause of feminism, you want women treated as equals, you want sexism to end, but don’t want to call yourself a feminist for fear of how people will treat you, I’ll understand. But please know, I think that’s sad. And it does hurt the cause of feminism—the same way not coming out as an atheist hurts the cause of atheism—by making it harder for atheists in finding each other, coordinating action, showing the true strength of their numbers…and by allowing myths about atheists to prevail. As they will, until there are too many openly observed counter-examples for those myths to survive. After all, what has made gay people, and gay rights, more popular? Coming out. More people, knowing more gay people in their life.
Even Terry Crews said in that interview, that the people who are silent about their feminism, are akin to the people who silently said nothing about Jim Crowe segregation before the Civil Rights Act, even when they were secretly against it. They allowed racism to dominate and control the culture by not actively taking that control back. Declaring yourself a feminist—openly—empowers every cause women fight for, in exactly the same way everyone who held a sign or marched in the streets for civil rights did. Social change requires visible numbers to reach a tipping point, until the accumulated light is so bright that it melts away the lies and myths and the status quo. To make you too scared to openly join in bringing that about, is precisely what the enemies of feminism want.
You Can Develop Your Own Feminism
The first step to escape that trap is to realize that, just like your atheism, you can define your own feminism. You don’t have to accept the lies and myths or fringe elements, in feminism any more than in any other social movement. The myth about atheists once was that atheists are communists. To declare yourself an atheist, subjected you to bigoted assumptions everywhere that you were not just a communist, but a fan of the Soviet Union even. But that was never true. It was true of some atheists; but not of atheism, nor of most atheists. Do you have to endorse communism to openly declare yourself an atheist? Obviously not. You can be any kind of atheist you want. And still be an out and proud atheist.
Feminism gets exactly the same sham treatment atheism does. You don’t have to agree with every feminist; just as you don’t have to agree with every atheist. And you don’t have to buy into the myths about either. You can instead break them, by showing the world what your feminism looks like, just as you can do for your atheism.
A political fundraising letter written by Pat Robertson in 1990 captures the religious mythology against feminism that attaches to the word still today. He wrote:
The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
You laugh. But a lot of atheists are saying very much similar things about feminists. The Pat Robertson of atheism today is the atheist video blogger Phil Mason, popularly known as Thunderf00t. His anti-feminist channel has over 150,000 subscribers. He is one of the most watched atheist thought leaders in the world. And for over a year now among his primary activism has been publishing videos denouncing feminism. He actually makes a comfortable living at it.
Of course, as an atheist, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft. But he does believe in the secular equivalent of witches: he declares that feminists are all professional victims, and shameless liars, who literally, in his words, “poison everything,” and are “toxic parasites” who are “poisoning atheism” by, as I have seen him argue, opposing all sex and sexuality, supporting false rape accusations to destroy men they don’t like, and fabricating death and rape threats against themselves just to get attention, and that even the real threats and harassment they get, they actually deserve to get and have no right to complain about. So yes, we atheists have our own Pat Robertson. And our own myths and lies about feminists.
One of many secular myths about feminists, for example, is that feminists are against women dressing sexy. But that’s false. Almost no feminists are. Most feminists actually quite like the idea. What feminists do want is for women who dress sexy to be treated respectfully as people and not objects. In fact, almost all leading feminists today even campaign against slut shaming, not for it. But even if, let’s say, you meet some weird fringe feminist who is campaigning against all wearing of high heels as a manifestation of patriarchal oppression, do you have to agree with them? Obviously not. As an atheist, you don’t have to agree with those fringe weirdo atheists who think the Soviet Union was a bona fide utopia, either. Neither, as a feminist, do you have to share the opinion of high heel haters. Although you certainly, as a humanist, ought to listen to women who wear high heels, and be more sympathetic to what they have to say. And you certainly shouldn’t, even inadvertently, be pressuring any woman to wear them who doesn’t want to. But that’s not the same thing as being against them.
Just as the existence of debates among atheists doesn’t mean you can’t be an atheist, so the existence of debates among feminists doesn’t mean you can’t be a feminist. On my own blog network, FreeThoughtBlogs, we have one feminist blogger who is against sex work, regarding it all as intrinsically degrading and exploitative. We also have at least six feminist bloggers, myself included, but most are women, who wholly disagree with her and are actively pro sex work. Like atheism, feminism is not a monolith.
Enter the debate. Consider all sides fairly. Look at the evidence. That’s how you approach debates in atheism. You don’t steer clear of atheism because of it. You remain an atheist in spite of it. You should treat feminism exactly the same way.
You’ve Just Been Critically Thinked
By the way—you might not have noticed that I’ve just been using a critical thinking skill on you. It’s a skill that, as a humanist, should be a common one you employ—whenever you can—to question and test your own thinking. A lot of the reasons people give for not wanting to call themselves a feminist, or for saying feminism is bad, are identical to reasons people give for not wanting to call themselves an atheist, or for saying atheism is bad. If those reasons make no sense in the case of atheism, why should those reasons continue to be used in the case of feminism?
The tool being used here is an intellectual manifestation of forced perspective: look to see if the reasons you have for maintaining a position or attitude will hold up when used analogously on something else suitably similar, especially something you hold the opposite position or attitude about. And if they don’t hold up, ask why then are you still using them?
A good example of that is how I now apply this rule whenever forming or hearing judgments about women: I immediately reverse her gender and query whether the reaction or opinion would be the same. I’ve done this for so long now that it has become an almost automatic check on the sexist filter my culture installed in me. Which in turn has exposed to me how many sexist assumptions I had in me that I wasn’t even aware of. And likewise in others.
The basic idea? Flip the gender (or race, or religion, or nation, or person, whatever the analog is), swap one in for the other, and then see if your thinking gets the same results. Question why it doesn’t.
And to do all that, you have to follow rule number one for all critical thought: check the facts. Especially, go directly to the source: not what someone says a woman said, but what she actually said, and the actual context in which she said it.
The Elevatorgate Paradigm
Consider this example: Elevatorgate. I won’t assume everyone knows what Elevatorgate is (although by now you really should; these days, not knowing all about it would be something akin to only knowing how to operate a rotary phone [it’s covered on Know Your Meme and RationalWiki]). But be that as it may. It’s ground zero for the anti-feminist movement within atheism.
The Elevatorgate “controversy” originated with a remark made years ago by Rebecca Watson, who is a magician, comedian, media specialist, and social commentator, founder of the Skepchick network, and one of the most famous feminists in movement atheism today. She video blogs regularly, like Thunderf00t, only she’s way funnier. And not evil. Although, she is the most evil thing ever according to thousands of anti-feminist atheists. (And yes, we have thumb counts. There are thousands.)
The mythology goes like this:
Rebecca Watson advocated for draconian anti-harassment policies at atheist conventions that would forbid all sex or any hitting on anyone ever, because some guy innocently asked her for coffee in an elevator once. And therefore feminism is ruining atheism.
Okay. Step one.
Go directly to the source.
The video in which she supposedly said this is easily found. In it you’ll find she merely said “Guy’s, don’t do that,” and calmly and reasonably explained why. That’s it. [Statement at timestamp 5:02. Context starts at timestamp 4:30. Metacontext starts at 2:38.]
She said nothing there about anti-harassment policies, nor called the incident in the elevator harassment. And she has never called for any harassment policy that would forbid sex or hitting on people in respectful ways. In fact, what she did say should be, to any humanist, obvious and decent advice: don’t approach a woman you’ve never met or spoken to before, in a closed elevator, at four AM, in a foreign country, after you just saw her say she was tired and needed to go to bed, and just watched her give a talk about how she doesn’t like being treated like that…and ask her to join you, alone, for coffee in your room. That’s not how you make women feel comfortable at events. It is, actually, how you make women feel very un-comfortable at events, and thus less likely to attend them.
Besides this illustrating the most rudimentary critical thinking skill of checking the source against a claim being made, we can also apply that “analogy” tool I’ve been talking about. In fact, here we can tie that tool into the fundamental humanist value of compassion: swap her out, for yourself, in all the same circumstances, but without any advantages you have that she lacks. Imagine being literally in her shoes. How would you feel in that circumstance? Don’t you think you would end up giving people the same advice? If you can’t see that, your compassion module isn’t working very well. And my advice to you is that you need to work on that.
I myself first imagined being not her but me, in the same circumstances, being hit on by a strange guy in that elevator, who wanted me to come to his room. I have been hit on by gay men a lot throughout my life, but always in comfortable circumstances and appropriate ways, so I’ve never been offended or creeped out by it. But that way, in that circumstance? I’m a man and that would make me very uncomfortable. Reverse the physical power dynamic, and it would only be worse. Add on top of that the shitty way society treats women who are victimized when they say yes in situations like that (a major feminist issue), and the way saying no in situations like that often doesn’t end well, because of widespread assumptions of male entitlement (another feminist issue), and it would be even worse still.
If you aren’t thinking about these things, or aren’t aware of them, you aren’t being the humanist you could be.
My main point, though, is that here, with Elevatorgate, we have the whole thing I’ve been talking about in all its parts: an atheist system of lies and mythology, promulgated within our own movement, designed to attack feminism and feminist goals, and to conceal and ignore the real concerns of women and what they actually said, and which is therefore harmful to women and promotes and abets the harming of women, which a simple application of basic critical thinking skills would inoculate you against, and wholly explode. And in this case, we see that a basic critical thinking tool, cognitive forced perspective, also happens to be what compassion as a virtue actually consists of doing: putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, which requires you to find out, and thus actually understand, how they differ from you, and how their circumstances differ from yours, which requires actually listening to them, and many others like them.
So the humanist lesson here is that as a result of applying a basic critical thinking skill to anti-feminist mythology you will learn something about the lived experience of women in our movement, and how they actually think and feel about things, which knowledge you can use not only to make yourself a better person, but also to make this a better, more inclusive movement.
Bad Epistemology
So let me back up for a moment and explain how all this ties into philosophy, and our goal to bring our community together. Throughout my life, I’ve discovered countless things I assumed were true, aren’t. In fact, in every subject, after I researched it in depth, I have discovered I had numerous false beliefs. Which means in every subject you haven’t thoroughly researched, odds are you have numerous false beliefs, too. And because you can’t test and research every belief and assumption you have, that means you—yes you—have now—and will always have—a lot of false assumptions, and a lot of false beliefs. That should humble you.
Every time you try to assert some certainty about some view of things you have, something you assume to be true, you should stop to ask yourself, “Wait, am I sure I’m right about this?” The tools you apply to answer that question, constitute your epistemology. Epistemology is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with how you know something is true. One characteristic that is shared by all religions, even the most harmless and liberal religions, is a bad epistemology.
Because good epistemologies sweep all religions and superstitions away. Whereas bad epistemologies put us under constant threat of being highly certain of things that are in fact false. And not just religious things. All things. So our singular aim should be not the combating of religion alone, but the combating of all bad epistemologies.
The first goal of humanism, therefore, must be the pursuit of installing in ourselves the best epistemology we can find, which must be an epistemology that is itself self-testing and self-improving—so that if it is flawed, we will be steered constantly toward finding those flaws and fixing them. We must take that philosophical exercise seriously as our first and continual goal as humanists. Because all other goals depend on it. If we want to better the lot of all humanity, we need to be able to find out how best to do that, and not stumble into yet more false beliefs about how to do it. Escaping religion is not enough. If you stumble into a secular ideology that is just as false and just as harmful as any religion, you have made no relevant progress. You’ve just replaced one kind of religion for another.
One thing we know by now is that good epistemologies should be up to date and well tested and scientifically informed. If you want to see what that means in practice, I teach an online course on critical thinking skills about once a year for Partners for Secular Activism. I also have resources on my website, under the link for naturalism at richardcarrier.info [especially this and this]. In both I illustrate the importance now, of not just logic and fallacy avoidance, but also the science of cognitive biases, which distort how all of us think, and therefore we have to know how to correct for and overcome them; and the science of emotion, which we have to understand better to make better decisions (because sound thinking does not mean bypassing emotions, but listening to them smartly); and the logic of probabilistic reasoning, which teaches us to ask smarter questions about how we know something is typical or not, or how important it is to test alternative explanations of the evidence against our own.
All three factors—cognitive biases, the science of emotions, and probability theory—often intersect.
The Example of Black & White Thinking
For example, a cognitive bias most commonly but not only found within politically conservative minds is black-and-white thinking, an effect of what is called ambiguity intolerance: if you are afflicted with this trait, ambiguity is physically uncomfortable for you, and as a result you are highly motivated to eliminate it. You will thus not be comfortable with something being only likely or unlikely. Instead you will feel a constant emotional need for everything to be either true or false. The idea that it might be, say, very likely but not certain, or somewhat more likely than not, will be really hard for you to cope with. When this ambiguity intolerance encounters disjunctive reasoning, the result is called black and white thinking. We see this at work when anti-feminist atheists assume that wanting to prohibit sexual harassment means banning all sex and all flirting with or hitting on people at events. Because you can only be either for all of it, or against all of it. The messy, complicated, middle area, where some sexual behaviors are okay and others not, literally hurts the brains of the ambiguity intolerant.
So watch for that. When you find yourself slipping into black and white thinking; when you catch yourself assuming something has to be either true or false (rather than some degree of probability), or that someone has to be either totally against something or totally okay with it (rather than a more nuanced view), or any false dichotomy like that, you are no longer thinking critically. Take steps to fix that.
The same goes for many other important errors we are naturally prone to. Good critical thinking skills will include the requisite knowledge to detect and correct for these common errors. For example, sound abstract reasoning requires properly constructing generalizations from particulars. Almost everyone, and that includes you, too quickly skips that necessary step of collecting particulars and generalizing from them, and just generalizes right from the armchair, from limited personal experience, or even no experience at all, and just using the imagination instead.
Don’t do that.
In thinking, always start with the particular and then generalize. And even in communicating, don’t drop all the particulars, because that will only sow confusion, as people wonder what particulars you are generalizing from. Particulars mean specific examples, especially concrete real-world examples. Gather those first, before moving to abstractions and generalizations. Often the worst thing you can do is rant about something in the abstract and never provide a real world example of what you mean. Errors in the step of reasoning from particulars to abstractions are disguised when you do that; and more effective discussion can be had when there is a real-world example to analyze.
For example, the popular and beloved podcaster Seth Andrews a while back posted a rant telling certain unidentified people who were getting angry about every little thing to stop being overly sensitive and “grow a thicker skin.” He gave no actual examples of who he was talking about or even an example in concept of what he was talking about. He was unaware that the exact same generalizations are used online to attack and harass women, and to dismiss feminism, and any awareness of the harm caused by insensitivity to the issues faced by all targets of discrimination. He would have avoided the appearance of siding with online harassers and right-wingers had he actually given concrete examples (ideally real-world examples, but at least thoughtful or realistic hypotheticals), and then developed his abstractions from those examples.
This is an error so common that once you know to look for it, you’ll be surprised how often it occurs. Ron Lindsay’s disastrous opening speech for the Women in Secularism conference [in 2013] was an example, in which he complained about feminism without providing a single example of what he was actually referring to. That made his remarks sound intentionally broad, which painted him (and his organization, the Center for Inquiry) in a very negative light. Had he researched the matter, to collect and use real-world particulars to make his points, and done this critically—and thus not just selectively choosing examples reinforcing his preconceived notions, but actually looking to see how many counter-examples to his pre-conceived notions there were—he would have found out his complaints were groundless or overstated. The result would have been a much better speech on feminism.
Similarly, in Peter Boghossian’s otherwise useful book A Manual for Creating Atheists, he included a chapter that attacked all feminists as reactionary postmodernist enemies of reason and reality. Notably, at no point in that chapter does Boghossian ever give an example of who he means, or what they actually said, about anything. Had he taken the trouble to research, collect and study actual, real-world examples, he would have written a far better and more accurate chapter on the subject. Instead, he reasoned directly from the abstract, and from his imagination, and never checked it against the particulars of the real world.
Don’t do that.
All abstract argument must begin from a familiarity with the particular examples you are abstracting from. That’s critical thinking 101. Boghossian’s claim that “most” academic feminists fit the profile he constructed would require not just finding examples of academic feminists who fit his profile, but reading widely across all contemporary feminism, to verify that those fitting his profile are the norm, rather than a fringe minority. The same thus goes for any generalization about anything, not just feminists.
Watch yourself, and catch when you do this, when you skip the step of collecting concrete examples and then abstracting from them, and instead just directly launch from an abstract or general premise. And ask yourself, if you aren’t using real-world particulars, Why? Is the fact that you can’t find real world examples significant? Did you even check to see if there were examples? Did you verify if they were normal or unusual? Do the actual properties of those concrete cases support the specific generalization you are basing on them?
This is crucial for humanists. Because real world examples tie you to evidence, and to the way the world really works, so you can test models of reality against reality, rather than what you only imagine in your head. (And for reality, see my article on Fourth Wave feminism early next week.) And humanism is nothing if not a commitment to evidence-and-reality-based thinking. If you need real world examples (because you aren’t already personally or sufficiently familiar with any), admit that this is a state of ignorance you have to responsibly rectify. Talk to people who have examples, and can supply you with full accounts (people who have experienced them, worked with them in a real-world way, researched them as a professional historian or psychologist, or whatever the case), or read widely what such people have written.
I find this is extremely important in subjects where people don’t have enough personal experience for their own assumptions or imagination to be reliable. For example, in the way men often react incredulously to women discussing their experiences with street harassment, assault, or rape; or in the way cisgender heterosexuals often misunderstand homosexuality and transgenderism; and on and on.
Don’t generalize. Don’t make abstract claims. Neither use them as premises, nor reach them as conclusions. Until you have enough familiarity with numerous concrete cases—which you can only reliably learn from people who have direct, real-world experience with them (or others who learned from them). This is literally a logically necessary step.
The Failure of Dawkins
And this is why it matters…
Bringing our community together requires being skilled and honest critical thinkers, so we can purge ourselves of repellant lies and mythologies against feminism, as much as against any other group or idea. Because we need feminism. Not only because most humanists are feminists, so you’d better not be alienating your principle market base. But also because feminism is necessary to bring more women into the freethought movement.
I shall close with two examples of failing at this. Because they illustrate how feminism makes a difference between effective and ineffective behavior in achieving that principal goal I was asked to talk about: Bringing our community together.
How do we reach greater parity between men and women active in the movement, especially among the youngest generations, since that is where our future lies? And especially at the leadership level, as seeing people like themselves in charge is what inspires many people to join? Can we do that by ignoring the interests and concerns of half the human race? Not really, no. The fact that we have more than twice as many men in this movement as women (and in leadership, the ratio is worse than five to one) should be a scandal. We must be doing something wrong.
And I think one stupid thing we do is let our most famous members get away with denigrating women and women’s issues to the general public, the worst possible PR move, a fact that definitely drives away many women. For example, as I think everybody knows, Richard Dawkins has said a lot of douchy and out of touch things. He rarely has anything nice to say about feminism and feminist issues. For instance, he has a lot of armchair opinions about rape and sexual assault, such as that being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it [as in, not enough to feel damaged by it–ed.] (it didn’t occur to him that maybe he should gather more experiences from molestation victims to see if his experience was the norm: that’s a failure to follow basic critical thinking in more ways than one); or that being raped by a stranger is worse than being raped by someone you know (without giving any reason how he could know that—again, he didn’t check with anyone who would know). Dawkins doesn’t do any fact checking. He doesn’t get broadly informed about rape or rape victim experiences before pronouncing definite judgments about it. That’s being a bad humanist.
But it gets worse. He also mockingly said of a woman reporting she was raped while drunk, that she was as guilty of getting raped as a drunk driver, comparing her to someone saying, “Officer, it’s not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk.” He also tweeted that her testimony shouldn’t be believed because she was drunk. And that no rape victim’s testimony should ever be believed if they were drunk. When several shocked people asked him what the hell he was thinking, he backed up into just trying to insist over and over again that a woman can’t accuse a man of rape if she wasn’t conscious when the rape occurred. That she was conscious of plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did occur, he simply ignores.
A better grounding in feminism would have corrected him on all of this.
Of course, Dawkins insists he is “a passionate feminist.” Because he is so very concerned about how Muslims treat women. Dawkins said:
I concentrate my attention on that menace and I confess I occasionally get a little impatient with American women who complain of being inappropriately touched by the water cooler or invited for coffee or something which I think is, by comparison, relatively trivial.
So threats to women’s happiness in the West, how women are mistreated by non-Muslims, is trivial, and he’s sick of hearing about it. This is not humanism or feminism. It is not bringing the community together, but treating with disdain the very women you want to come to events and join organizations and advance the cause—by dismissing the concerns that actually directly affect them.
Why are we belittling real issues affecting our women here at home, and using the issues of other women in other countries we don’t even control the culture of or vote in, as an excuse to do that? We control this culture. We vote in this country. We make the policy decisions for our organizations and events. We choose how we behave at them. So there is a lot more we can do about sexism and unequal treatment of women and minorities here, than anywhere else. This does not mean we should ignore the plight of people in other nations or what causes it. But we should portion our priorities according to our actual resources, needs, and capabilities. We certainly shouldn’t be ignoring injustices at home, ignoring the obstacles to women’s happiness and success right in front of us, that we actually have the power to remove. We certainly shouldn’t be mocking rape victims, and blaming them for getting raped. But we also shouldn’t be dismissing all the things that are making women in our movement not want to be in it. Because if you treat what women say and feel with disdain, you have no right to wonder why they aren’t showing up.
The Failure of Harris
Sam Harris has done the same, alienating women in the movement, and giving women outside the movement a reason not to want to become a part of it. He was asked why so few women buy his books—based on the fact, one must assume, that so few come to his talks and book signings. His answer was this:
[B]eing very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people … People just don’t like to have their ideas criticized. There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women. …
The atheist variable just … doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building, extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.
It’s shocking that he would just make that up as the reason women don’t come to events or (he supposes) buy his books, because it means he didn’t even check. He just regurgitated a sexist trope in our culture, that women aren’t into conflict or being critical, and are only into being nice and nurturing. He even insinuated this was biologically innate, by joking about it being an estrogen thing, and thus not a product of an intrinsically sexist society that enculturates women to be that way (a way that is notably intrinsically subservient to men).
The irony is that he then complained about being attacked by countless critical women who evidently didn’t fit his expectation of how women are supposedly not into conflict, and are only into being nice and nurturing. The double irony is that he still hasn’t detected the irony in that. But the sadder thing is, this is the same stupid thing Michael Shermer said years before, when he tried to explain why there are no leading women in skepticism, by saying skepticism was more of a guy thing, which was absurd because even then there were a dozen leading women in skepticism, and he evidently couldn’t think to name even one of them, but instead regurgitated the same sexist trope Harris did.
But what really angered me about Harris’s remark is that he is supposed to represent us, and definitely does do so to the general public whether we like it or not, and that fact places a great responsibility on him to know what this movement has had to say about things like this, and thus represent us correctly. For years before he said that stupid thing, we had been engaging in a large and open discussion within the whole movement, everywhere at conferences and online, about why women aren’t coming to events. Harris exhibited not one sign of having heard any of that. Why?
In contrast to Harris, do you know what people like me did when posed that same question years before? We actually asked women themselves why they weren’t coming to events. Harris chose to regurgitate a sexist armchair assumption from his imagination. We chose to base our answer on the dutiful collection of actual empirical facts. The answers I have seen accumulated over the last five years have been repeatedly consistent across hundreds of localities in several Western nations:
- Women did not like how they were being treated at events.
- Women did not like that their interests were being ignored by our leaders and organizations
- And women did not like that we were not asking many women to serve in leadership roles or to deliver lectures and presentations.
Not once did any woman ever tell me, or anyone I know, that they didn’t like atheist books and events and organizations because they “weren’t nice enough” or were “too critical.” We found not one whiff of that supposed estrogen vibe Harris imagined.
Now think about this. Sam Harris is allowing his sexism to prevent him from ever discovering, or acknowledging, or doing anything about the actual reasons women are under-presented in this movement. He instead rests on a false sexist trope, and just perpetually defends it, never once learning anything, and consequently never once doing anything that can actually bring more women into the movement, and improve how they are treated in it, and by it. He ignores the first rule of critical thought—to gather the facts—and instead just draws on his armchair imagination, which has been molded by his sexist culture to think things are true about women, that in fact are not. This is the very kind of error in thinking that feminism has long been dedicated to stamping out. And stamping it out is why we need feminism. Because we need to stamp it out, in order to start hearing the real reasons we are turning women off, and to start doing something about them, and thus actually bringing our community together.
I also think there is some black and white thinking at work here. Harris assumes being a sexist means actively and openly saying women are inferior (like the president of Turkey recently did), when there is a far more common phenomenon of subconscious or unintentional sexism. In fact you often won’t know your views and assumptions are sexist, because you don’t consistently self-monitor, and you don’t check the facts, to question the cultural assumptions you are simply taking for granted. To assume you are either an obvious and intentional sexist, or not sexist at all, is a good example of black and white thinking. Which is bad thinking.
Good critical thinking requires self-criticism, it requires self-checking, self-monitoring, to control for your own biases, hidden influences, and inherited assumptions. And it requires empiricism in place of armchair reasoning. Don’t just pull reasons out of your ass. Actually ask women, investigate, find out what they are saying, discover the actual causes of what’s happening. And when you discover the facts aren’t what you thought, ask yourself why you thought differently.
Conclusion
That’s enough to make my point. Let me just summarize what I’ve been getting at with all this.
Humanism entails feminism.
Because humanism means wanting to better the lot of all human beings, and you cannot really value doing that, if you do not value doing it for half the human race. And that’s what feminism is about: shining a light on all the ways we are disproportionately making things worse, or harder, or less fun, or more unjust or unfair, for the women among us than for men; and then working out how to fix that. We have to face the fact that we may be perpetuating these disparities without even realizing it. And that it may be subtle. And that it might not be visible to you because it isn’t happening to you, but is happening to a lot of other people.
And that requires listening, and compassion, and critical thinking. It requires listening to and reading what a lot of women in our movement are saying. And caring about it. Critical thinking, meanwhile, requires applying the same critical thought to ourselves that we do to the religious; because that is exactly what we are asking them to do, and we have no legitimate argument that they should do that, if we won’t do it ourselves, every bit as much as we wish they did. If humanism is to be a superior replacement to religion, it has to actually be a superior replacement to religion. [The same goes for all of atheism.] Which means we have to actually behave the way we keep insisting religious people should. And that means we have to combat sexism, inadvertent and intentional, within our own movement, every bit as much as we expect them to. It means we have to pay attention to how we may be ignoring or mistreating the women in our own movement, every bit as much as we expect of them.
And above all, this means applying our own compassion, critical thought, skepticism, and willingness to change in light of evidence, not just to religion, but to ourselves. We should likewise apply to our own women, and the issues affecting them, our compassion, our skilled reasoning, and our desire to improve the lot of every human being, through our own human action. Because those are the very core principles of humanism itself.
Godless morality has no future, Richard. What a waste of your considerable talent. A Godman walks the earth, IN INDIA.
Tinfoil hat and bigotry from you yet again.
You are done here.
I’m blocking you.
Were you actually hoping to see specific examples of what Seth was ranting about?
The lesson should be that you need to present them at the time of the argument, not so far later as to be useless.
That would have made testing the validity of his assertions possible and thus made it possible for him to rethink his remarks if they were misplaced.
What exactly was he generalizing from? Is the generalization valid? Does context change the assessment? Are there counter-examples? Is the general phenomenon actually a problem or is the one complaining about it the one with the thin skin whining too much about something? Is that kind of complaint weaponized and misused by others such that the complainant needs to ensure he isn’t supporting that? Is his proposed remedy valid? And so on.
The actual questions that would make his complaint of any use to the public, and made it possible for him to correct any errors in facts or reasoning (or splash damage against innocent victims) if any there were, he should already have answered from the word go.
That’s what critically thinking about something looks like. What he did was thus not good critical thinking. Even if, whatever he was talking about, he was right. (Although especially if he was wrong.)
Richard:
This is something I try to do on a regular basis (can’t say I always remember to, unfortunately). Asking that question of myself started me down a path that would eventually lead me to embracing science as the best tool humans currently possess for acquiring knowledge of and understanding the world around us. That same path also involved learning about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. It also led me to FtB. Which led to me becoming a humanist. Which led to me becoming a feminist. Which led me to support trans issues. Which led to me becoming more outspoken about a host of social issues.
The question that got the ball rolling?
Michelle Bachmann stated in a television interview back in 2010 that the U.S. is a Christian nation. When I heard that, my kneejerk reaction was “no it isn’t”. But then something dawned on me.
I wasn’t sure if I was right about that. And I wanted to be sure (or as sure as I could be).
I definitely appreciate the importance of self-examination.
I am fortunate to be a member of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association. (Visit us at nosha.info). We have women in key positions of authority and responsibility, including our President, now in her second term. We haven’t had the internecine war over the role of women in our group. I don’t know of any men in NOSHA who has a problem or issue with having women in positions of authority. Maybe we are the exception to this current kulturkampf within the Freethought community. It is a shame to think that people dedicated to critical thinking and the use of reason would be so blind to their sexist attitudes towards women. I agree that it is self-defeating if we are not inclusive of women, the GLBT community, persons of color, etc. When I was a youngster, I remember watching Cosmos. It blew my mind when Carl Sagan shared the amazing truth that we are all star stuff and therefore connected. It takes time but I believe progress is being made in a positive direction on these issues.
The day “atheism” becomes a “movement” is the day I walk away. And don’t conflate humanism with atheism.
Just because a rational person is not duped by old myths and hierarchical power plays does not necessarily mean that person has faith in “human nature.” Some of us think the natural world and environment is crucial and that humans, religious or otherwise, are mimicking cancer.
Dude, atheism became a movement sixty years ago. One of its leading national organizations, American Atheists (which began the movement as a social movement sixty years ago with its membership, chapters, meetings, publications, and eventually conferences), is running a huge conference this very day in Memphis, for and by the atheism movement and attended by hundreds of participants in that movement. I’m speaking this very night to an affiliate of the atheism movement’s college wing, The Secular Student Alliance, in Arizona.
So, the movement already exists, and is huge, and is growing.
Cat already out of the bag.
Based on your closing remark, I recommend you leave atheism and start a cult that worships Cthulhu. Or try to summon Gozer from an old building in New York.
Phooey. Turning atheism into just another religion may be 60 years old but people with functional minds, who do not buy the load of corn sold by god peddlers, do not have to trade one sets of dogmatic ideas for an atheist “movement.” There is no “leave atheism” the way one might leave the catholic church. I get it that you and those like you still need some religious-like dictates in order to feel comfortable but that is separate from knowing ancient mythology is false. But hey, it’s your blog so you can rant and rave against the people you disagree with all you want. Eventually you will get better at writing and get a thicker skin so you can take criticism without having to bellow “GO AWAY!” every time someone calls you on your baloney. Given your personality type, I know this comment will not make it through moderation, but you and I both know you read it…that is enough.
Believing in facts and having values is not a religion. If you don’t want to believe in any facts and don’t want to have any moral values, then like I said, you need to go worship Cthulhu or summon Gozer.
You certainly need to stay away from the atheism movement you despise. We don’t want people like you in our organizations or at our events.
Richard:
You do seem to make some good points here and there, now and again at least. However, it seems you yourself also have a tendency to some demonizing, to some mythologizing, to some categorical tarring of all with a narrow brush that really only covers a smallish segment. Specifically, it seems to me that Mason rather clearly differentiates between some aspects of “feminism” that he thinks are more odious than others – as evidenced by the titles of several of his videos, e.g., Why ‘feminism’ poisons EVERYTHING, and Why ‘Feminism’ is poisoning Atheism (Part 3).
Rather than just trying to dismiss everything he says with your “his anti-feminist channel”, maybe you might want to actually address some of his objections. Unless your modus operandi is akin to “Four legs good, two legs bad”. Or is it maybe “two legs good, three legs bad”?
Thunderf00t’s illogical and fact challenged rants have already been fisked to death. Just like Pat Robertson’s has. One can easily find those takedowns with five minutes on Google. Indeed the entry on him at RationalWiki is practically sufficient, and easily consulted. His dishonesty and racism and sexism were already demonstrated even on my blog. Anyone can just search his moniker in the blog search window to the left.
Don’t repeat what Boggossian did with gay pride. It’s not my job to hold your hand. When you can answer a question yourself with even just thirty minutes on Google, or even just searching my own blog, you shouldnt be asking me to help you.
Richard:
Ok, I’ll concede, on the basis of a quick review of the RationalWiki article on Mason, that there’s some evidence that he, to be charitable, also tends to go off the deep end. But that still does not in the slightest address much less refute a number of his objections to various manifestations of “toxic” feminism. Or are you going to resort to the “No True Feminist” argument? You may wish to give some thought to the SMBC cartoon on Internet Fighting. While there is no doubt that the “anti-feminist” side has some percentage of “crazy assholes” in it, it seems equally clear that the “feminist” side has a similar percentage of the same type.
In any case, and relative to your Shermertron Denouement post, any plans to let through and respond to my last comment there? Willing to concede that I never said that “Watson affirmed a belief” that she had not? Also, as I would like to respond to a comment that Plethora directed my way, is it likely that any response I might make to her, or to anyone else for that matter, is going to see the light of day there?
Your last comment doesn’t address anything to the point.
The evidence speaks for itself: Mason despises feminists and attacks feminism as a whole and numerous feminist causes in snearing and hateful tones. Proved.
On the other thread? I have a life. Which necessitates long delays in clearing comments from the moderation queue, and triage in deciding which queues to clear and when. Maybe if you had a life (?), you wouldn’t be so impatient over that? I don’t know. But whatever the cause, impatience is not a virtue.
Steersman @7,
We’re sure it wasn’t intentional and take no offense but just for future reference our pp’s are they/them/their as opposed to her.
Plethora (#7B):
Just out of curiosity, or maybe as a point of reference, which public toilet facilities do you use? The ones labeled “Pointers” (M) or the ones labeled “Setters” (F). While I might be forced to use the standard third person plural versions of various pronouns, particularly if you’re not prepared to answer that question, I can’t help but get the impression that this whole thing with “xir/xe/xem” and the like, including your own set of expectations, is a rather problematic case of pandering to the delusional. Considering that the atheist “movement” is supposedly predicated on a repudiation of that modus operandi, I find it rather “surprising” that “it” does so in the case of gender politics.
In any case, while I would like to respond to your comment in Richard’s Shermertron Denouement post as I think it raised a number of interesting points, I kind of expect that, given Richard’s rather tight-assed moderation policy – rather inconsistent with his claim to support the concept of “free thought”, that might be a waste of time. But if I do so, you might look for it in the Pit ….
You are being unfair to Sam Harris. He was put on the spot in a public forum and asked a question he wasn’t qualified to answer. Instead of saying, “I don’t know,” he speculated off the top of his head. That was a mistake, obviously, but not one that deserves punishment.
His speculation does not reveal him to be a sexist. He thought about the general tendencies of women versus the general tendencies of men in his own experience and extrapolated some ideas from that. That’s not sexist. His ignorance of the gender wars going on in one small part of the atheist community should be unsurprising — he said long ago that he gave up reading PZ’s blog.
Someone who doesn’t speak exactly the ideological boilerplate you wish to hear is not a sexist because of that. Until you can demonstrate that men and women are identical, it will remain legitimate to look at general, average tendencies of the two sexes when it comes to questions like the one Harris was asked. And discussing those general, average tendencies should never be confused with saying “all men” or “all women,” which is an embarrassing mistake you make in your post.
Sam Harris wrote a whole considered rebuttal in which he failed to learn anything and defended his every word.
So, no, he didn’t think he made a mistake by being put on the spot. And yes, I am being entirely fair to him, precisely because he extensively defended the very thing I’m criticizing him for, in a venue in which he was not put on the spot at all (his own blog).
Yes, having false beliefs about women is sexist. You are ignoring the part of my article where I explain the difference between intentional and conscious sexism and unintentional, unconscious sexism. And by doing so, you are reinforcing and defending unintentional and unconscious sexism, which is the most pervasive kind (I cited abundant scientific evidence of that fact), by denying that it exists or needs to be addressed.
Yes, Harris is morally responsible for keeping abreadst of major issues in the movement he claims to represent and is asked to represent in public all the time. That’s a fundamental requirement of acting like a responsible person.
I never said anything about anyone having to “speak exactly the ideological boilerplate” on this or any issue and in fact in the article you are commenting on here I have a whole section explicitly denouncing such a thing. So you are engaging in not only an obvious straw man fallacy, you are doing so to assert something that is directly contrary to the facts you imply you have just informed yourself of. That is an example of really, really terrible thinking. Precisely what this whole article is about. You learned nothing.
Your argument about genders having to be “identical” likewise is a non sequitur, which ignores the extensive discussion already of why that point is actually false, in the very article you are commenting on here. Links were provided (e.g. this one) demonstrating why your thinking on this point is false and lacks any understanding or critical thought.
And I never say anything here about all men or all women. So do not credit false assertions to me. That is unbecoming of a sound thinker.
“…he included a chapter that attacked all feminists” is manifestly false. He actually included two paragraphs that criticized the conflation of feminism and postmodernism. You own Boghossian a retraction and an apology, Rick.
You just described a chapter that attacked all feminists.
He made no qualifiers (he never said “some”). And his attack was even broader than you describe. It was as I described. And it was framed in the context of attacking all liberal academia.
I’ve accurately described the facts.
His Twitter feed verifies it (even just recently).
No apology required.
Dr Carrier: you wrote “…good epistemologies sweep all religions and superstitions away.” Are you stating a certainty of belief that all mythology is founded in falsehood? Is it highly improbable that there myths that contain historical or scientific or spiritual truths? And then just afterwards you wrote about “black and white thinking.”
I’m skeptical… as in taking a more inquiring, examining, questioning, seeking attitude… about G-d (it’s arguable that the existence of G-d is an open ended question and that civilization’s most exacting epistemology discovered thus far, viz science, has precisely nothing to say about the existence of G-d)… I’m skeptical/dubious about religion, humanism, all -isms as ideological, an arguably false sense of consciousness based on subjective assumptions which are taken for granted and the non-rational belief that the rational perspective has been settled (or at least agreed upon by the ideologues).
I’m not as skeptical/dubious that your quoted statement above isn’t evidence of black and white thinking. Care to clarify?
I didn’t mention myths (except false ones). I said religions and superstitions.
Like thinking you have to write God as G-d. A primitive superstitious taboo based on the false belief that there are angry spirits who don’t like it if you put all the letters in when you refer to them and you’d better not make them angry by doing that.
Any epistemology that causes you to believe things like that, is a bad epostemology, which will cause you to accumulate many more false beliefs, inevitably some that will not be good for you or society.
Even when you have a mythology that “contains” some truths, all you should be believing in are the truths. The rest should be stripped away as false or as allegory. I discuss this in Sense and Goodness without God, in the section comparing religion with “traditional medicine.”
There is nothing black and white about this. Because it’s all about probabilities.
I respectfully disagree with you that using the spelling G-d instead of God is a “primitive superstitious taboo based on [a] false belief…” I suppose that you are free thinking and open minded and respectful and intelligent and empathetic and not “nihilistic” enough to realize another reason why?
You write: “Any epistemology that causes you to believe things like that…” This is a classic case of mind reading. If you really wished to understand the “belief” about writing G-d instead of God, then you might inquire of me (or ignore it) instead of believing that you know what I (or any other person) believes.
Obviously it’s your blog so you can enforce your personal orthodoxy. As for “free thinking” however, it’s highly uncertain how to distinguish mythologies from religions and “superstitions.” What is quite probable is that mythologies (including religions and what ideologues mistake for superstitious nonsense) are robust and anti-fragile and natural… and will very probably be part of human culture as long as human culture endures. Obviously (again) this doesn’t negate or relegate to “also rans” epistemologies like science and history. Recognizing the natural-ness of religion & superstition within the world view of naturalism simply allows for a relationship (or NOMA if you prefer) between mythology and epistemics.
In your follow up blog post you wrote
Real, natural, love of wisdom is probably accepting that what you call “religion and superstition” is more likely mythology and is part of human culture for the duration. You also write
I agree. The question is the methodology being used to discern between the truths and what is false or allegorical. How is deciding that you have a methodology to know the truth from the false? All methodologies have (1) sets of axioms or (2) assumptions taken for granted or (3) rational/logical arguments which according to the ideologues supporting the methodologies believe have been settled (or at least agreed upon by the group of ideologues). The problem is that these axioms and assumptions and beliefs about “settled arguments” and “agreements” are not readily falsifiable. They are taken in faith as truths without proof or evidence… which only really make them modern mythologies themselves… a complex form of story-telling and fiction-making. Is this an example of being skeptical?
False beliefs are false beliefs. And they cause harm, because they cause people to act as if they are true.
Superstitions are false beliefs. And accommodating superstitions is accommodating false beliefs. It therefore accommodates harm or accommodates epistemologies that will surely generate harmful beliefs.
Richard (#7B):
While Mason might periodically go off the deep end, I figure that it is quite clear that he only despises some feminists as suggested by this comment of his: “You don’t have to look long or hard to find the crazies in modern feminism.” Bit of a stretch, being charitable, for you to suggest that he despises all feminists.
But I also figure that my comments speak rather directly to the point that you, among many so-called “feminists”, are all too quick to ignore the rather large number of crazies in your own camp. Seems to me, and to many more knowledgeable & balanced & professional commentators, that y’all are far too quick to whitewash the crazies in feminism. Which one might argue is a significant contributing factor for the prevalence of crazies amongst the “anti-feminists”. And, as a case in point, since I know you’re big on evidence – though that seems more when it supports your position than not, you might consider the following from an article in Time – and by a woman I might add:
Given the season, care to “take one for the (“feminist”) team” and admit to having raped some woman to draw attention to the issue, and to atone for the sins of some of your fellows? Seems there’s a whole pile of highly questionable and specious dogma that motivates many “feminists”, and that leads them into making some really vile and odious conclusions and policy recommendations. Which have any number of equally vile and odious consequences. I figure your credibility would be enhanced substantially if you weren’t giving some credence to the suggestion that you have your thumbs on the scales.
Might be nice if you were as quick to admit your transgressions against others as you apparently are to accuse others of supposedly having transgressed against you, particularly when you have diddly squat in the way of evidence to justify the latter.
I don’t see any statements in that comment that are logically relevant to anything I’ve said.
“Nyah, nyah, can’t hear you!!” [with fingers in ears]
Really classy Richard, real classy.
What’s classy is that you didn’t even correctly describe what I said. You said something irrelevant. I said so. And you respond with claiming I refused to listen to you. No. What you said was irrelevant here. You still haven’t rebutted that fact.
Richard (11C):
Ipse dixit. Some can say that it is irrelevant that archeology and cosmology refutes young-earth creationism; doesn’t make it so.
Listening is only the first step. And there was an implicit analogy there: many people, apparently including you, can have closed ears or a closed mind.
You asserted that “Mason despises feminists and attacks feminism as a whole”. I pointed to a statement of his – i.e., “You don’t have to look long or hard to find the crazies in modern feminism.” – that rather clearly proves that he differentiates between the crazies, and the sane (or the sane-r). Ergo, he most emphatically does not “attack feminism as a whole”. Q.E.D.
And I even pointed to another case of a “crazy feminist” – unless you wish to argue that doing away with due process qualifies as “sane” – to bolster my case – contra yours – that not every “feminist” who claims the label has been “washed in the blood of the lamb”. So to speak. But speaking of which.
You can lead a dogmatist, a social-justice-warrior, a “feminist” to a syllogism, but apparently you can’t make them think.
Straw man arguments are not relevant here.
The evidence is clear. So your trying to spin it isn’t convincing anyone here.
Mason’s revolting and persistent antifeminist bigotry is thoroughly established. Splitting useless hairs does nothing to rehabilitate him. That’s like a racist saying he can’t be a racist because he has lots of black friends.
On balance, I still consider Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Peter Boghossian feminist relative to the predominant right-wing Christianist culture at large. Even if they have perhaps said ham handed things in the past, I don’t see any of these guys actively promoting diminishing the role of women in society or anything that suggests that equality should be the ultimate aim of society which is what feminism is about. In no way shape or form is anything they have said remotely comparable to the daily things we hear right wingers say all the time like Pat Robertson. We should be careful imposing our narrow definitions of feminism as being those with views we agree with in our personal narrow “in club.” To me this is a all too common tribalistic tactic of the right. Let’s keep a sense of proportion. The purpose of the essay seems to aim at polarization rather than education.
You don’t become a feminist simply because you no longer to actively legislate-away women’s rights. Being a nice enemy of women’s equality still leaves you an enemy of women’s equality. And these men are still fighting (even if inadvertently) women’s full equality, in all the ways I document and explain. And they are doing so because they don’t listen to feminists or study feminism and thus don’t learn anything that would help correct them.
Richard,
Most animal species exhibit a differentiated behaviour between males and females. Why would it be wrong to ask whether that is also the case with our own species? And, if it is, to what extent? What’s the relative importance of cultural, genetic and epigenetic factors? To what extent do the anatomic differences in the brains of men and women influence their differentiated behaviour? Are these anatomic differences determined by differences in the stimuli applied from birth, or are they genetically determined (or both)?
To me, these seem like perfectly legitimate questions. And asking them is quite different from endorsing rape or the discrimination of women. I agree that the Richard Dawkins comment on the insignificance of “being inappropriately touched” or his comparison of drunk driving with rape of drunken women are repulsive (I don’t actually have any problem with a woman being asked to take a coffee). I don’t think I would have liked to be Dawkins’ friend when he was younger.
Regarding Shermer and Harris… I’m not American, I’m Portuguese, and in the society I’m included in, women definitely behave differently than men and I think it’s perfectly okay to recognise it. It seems to me that’s all Harris was doing, reporting an observation and his explanation of it. Shermer, on the other hand, was endorsing discrimination, and that’s completely different. I observe much the same as Harris does; women tend to be less confrontational and tend to have less “intelectual” interests than men. In Portugal, this tends to be less the case for more educated people. In a couple where both are PhDs, it is often the case that this will not be the case at all. So I fully admit part of it is certainly cultural baggage. Traditionally, women were encouraged to not disagree with their husbands, or even express opinions at all, in public. In urban environments, that’s no longer the case, but sadly it still occurs in more rural environments. So I cannot know if younger generations, that grew in a civic culture that encourages gender equality, also display tremendous behavioural differences mainly as a part of their invisible familial cultural baggage, or simply because men and women are simply different and always will be.
I try not to let my personal preferences and ideological inclinations influence my conclusion on this (or any) issue, and think everyone should do the same. I tend to think a lot of the differentiated behaviour is simply genetic. The more people stimulate their brains to think, the less this will be the case, but it will still be the default position. Now, I’m open to changing my views on the issue, provided I find evidence to support this change. As far as I know, the scientific consensus on the issue is that brains of men and women are different because of genetic differences, and that explains a lot of the observed behavioural differences between men and women. My girlfriend is a psychologist, and in her undergraduate studies she told me she was taught precisely this. Furthermore, she was taught that men tend to be better at tasks that involve abstract thought and women better in language and communication skills. I don’t know if this is also taught in American universities. This information reinforced my preconceptions on this issue. I asked her if she was not troubled by the thought that women were inherently worse than men in abstract thought. She looked somewhat surprised and asked me if I was troubled by the though that men are inherently worse than women in language and communication skills. That opened up a completely new perspective for me on this issue. No, I’m not troubled by it at all! The truth has always set me free, and I hope it does the same with everyone else.
Before you copy-paste a series of links showing how all of these conclusions are wrong, let me tell you that I have not studied the subject detailedly (although I plan to, some day), so my opinions on it are little more than worthless. Studying this is not a priority to me, since I treat women with the exact same respect as I treat men. I don’t discriminate between the two at all, and think no one should. However, this should not prevent us from asking questions and seeking answers.
Cheers.
“Most animal species exhibit a differentiated behaviour between males and females. Why would it be wrong to ask whether that is also the case with our own species?”
Asking is not the same as claiming.
The problem is when people start making claims. That are false.
And humans are not like other animals on precisely this point: our neurology is highly plastic and variably adaptive, not fixed into evolved gender roles or anything else. That’s why we are so vastly culture-driven, unlike any other animal on earth.
This is easily demonstrated by looking at how nearly every assumption in your culture about what differs between men and women, is reversed or absent in some other culture or sub-culture, refuting any biological hypothesis (and failing to take that falsification test typifies most bogus gender difference research).
It is further demonstrated by statistical science showing that even the gender differences that exist cognitively are far smaller than people claim or assume, to the point of being almost unobservable without advanced scientific instruments (as Bernstein explains in the link about bell curves, which I gave in the article above and repeat again below, which I can only assume you either didn’t read of didn’t understand or simply ignored for some reason).
And such small differences are wholly incapable of explaining large disparities in behavior (e.g. a 10% difference between men and women cannot explain a 3:1 difference in turnout at events).
“To me, these seem like perfectly legitimate questions.”
They are. No one said they weren’t. The issue is that you have to answer them with rigorous science, not shoddy research, fallacious logic, and pseudoscience. As all the links I point you to in the above article explain; even actual scientists explain this point. Take heed. Learn.
“And asking them is quite different from endorsing rape or the discrimination of women.”
No one said they were the same. Nor did anyone here ever defend or criticize “asking” questions. They defend or criticize the answers some have falsely claimed to have proved.
I have to believe you are capable of understand the difference. Yet I cannot explain why you didn’t notice that difference.
“It seems to me that’s all Harris was doing, reporting an observation and his explanation of it.”
The problem is that his explanation was demonstrably false, based in no real science, and matched exactly sexist assumptions in the wider culture. And then he perpetuated them, instead of communicating the real facts so people can learn and do something about the real issues that needed to be addressed.
“I observe much the same as Harris does; women tend to be less confrontational and tend to have less “intelectual” interests than men.”
Science decisively refutes you. In the US and other places in Europe like the UK and Germany and Sweden, there are no large disparities in social or cognitive style or interest in intellectual pursuits.
This is why anecdotes cannot replace scientific data.
Although indeed maybe you have a shitty sexist culture that is oppressing women on Portugal. But if so, then you should be fighting to change that, so women can feel as free to be as intellectual and critical as they want to be, and clearly would be without that oppressive culture (as non-oppressive cultures and subcultures demonstrate).
Because by pressuring and enculturation women to be unintellectual and uncritical, you are promoting their subservience to men. Which is precisely the purpose of such sexist cultures. That’s bad. You should want to stop it. You certainly would if you were the one being oppressed by it.
“In Portugal, this tends to be less the case for more educated people.”
So you recognize the disparity is caused by a sexist culture and not innate differences (a gender imbalanced subculture that is “conveniently” imbalanced in precisely such a way as to keep women subservient to men; while yet another subculture shows no such disparity, proving it cannot be biological).
You should be doing something about that. Not defending it.
“I tend to think a lot of the differentiated behaviour is simply genetic.”
What you “think” is irrelevant, because it isn’t scientific and is highly influenced by the sexist culture you have had installed in your brain.
If you want to know something, and not just think it, you have to look at the best science.
“As far as I know, the scientific consensus on the issue is that brains of men and women are different because of genetic differences, and that explains a lot of the observed behavioural differences between men and women.”
Sorry, no. There is no science that shows this.
Maybe you are inaccurately reporting the science that shows small and nearly unobservable differences, which actually can’t explain any large differences in behavior, whereas culture demonstrably can, and as cross-cultural studies prove, does.
“Furthermore, she was taught that men tend to be better at tasks that involve abstract thought and women better in language and communication skills.”
The effect size in such studies is so small, though, that it doesn’t permit gender essentialist conclusions. See the Jamie Bernstein article on Harris not understanding how bell curves work. That will correct you.
http://skepchick.org/2014/09/sam-harris-doesnt-understand-bell-curves/
“Studying this is not a priority to me, since I treat women with the exact same respect as I treat men.”
But you are keeping and spreading false beliefs about women that harm them. Even now you said, falsely, that “men” are “better” at a high paying engineering task and “women” are “better” at a low paying secretarial task. That is wrong. And harmful. Because it creates the bias in hiring and salary decisions, for example, that the science I linked to shows exists.
You should care about that.
Moreover, the science shows (I gave many links in the article) that you won’t be aware of the biased way you are treating women. So your assurances that you are not are useless. Everyone shown to be exhibiting bias in those studies also insisted they weren’t. They all said the same thing you did. And probably genuinely believes it. Yet the science proved their perception about themselves was wrong: they were in fact treating women unfairly. (Even the women were.)
This is why culture is harmful when its memes are full of falsehoods that perpetuate stereotypes and prejudices that cause harm to women, such as by pipelining them into low paying and subservient jobs or cutting off their range of opportunities, or bolstering sexist cultural norms.
Thanks for the long answer. You’re right I may have a bias and not notice it, although I try my best. I’ll try to study the issue a bit more deeply whenever I can.
By the way, I didn’t mean to imply women were only good at secretariat jobs, being commanded by men. Many high paying jobs require skills such as those I mentioned women being (supposedly) better at.
Not really. Law requires logic, for example, which is supposedly what men are good at. Legislator requires aggressiveness, which is supposedly what men are good at. Etc. in other words, as soon as you try to claim “women are good at language” leads to a high paying job, there are already sexist tropes in place to challenge that. Sexism is a system of ideas like that, designed to create and foster the assumptions that pipeline women into low paying and subservient jobs, and grease the wheels for men to get into high paying and powerful jobs (and also to protect male dominated industries from female encroachment, e.g. car mechanics). It’s pernicious that way.
I concede that the charge of “unconscious” sexism is virtually unanswerable. Anyone who has ever said anything that includes a gendered pronoun can be accused of “unconscious” sexism, and no defendant can prove that they don’t have this “unconscious” bias. The charge is like “sin” that way. If you deny that you are sinful, obviously you are sinful. You’re just not aware of it. Now try to prove that this thing you are not aware of is not there. (But don’t try too hard — because that effort just proves that the charge is true.)
Speaking of evidence, it sometimes seems like you are not a fan of it. You failed to link to Sam Harris’s blog post about the sexism accusations in your article (or comment). This is a strange omission in a section called “The Failure of Harris.” You accuse him of sexism. You know that he has already written a defense of himself. And you fail to link to it.
It’s almost as if you don’t want your readers to know about it.
In your comment you say that “Harris is morally responsible for keeping abreadst [sic] of major issues in the movement he claims to represent.” I am not aware of any claim by Harris that he represents a movement. In fact, in the blog post you failed to link to Harris says this:
He is not part of the FtB world and doesn’t claim to be. He’s not responsible for keeping up with it.
Your misrepresentations of Harris made me suspicious that you might have engaged in similar shenanigans elsewhere in the article. So I checked into your claim that Richard Dawkins asserted that “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.” The only link you offer to support your claim is an article at Glenn Beck’s site The Blaze (!), which contains no support for your claim. That article quotes Dawkins’ recent book:
Dawkins called his experience “extremely disagreeable” and “almost worse than painful.” That hardly supports your claim that Dawkins said that “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.”
He appears to think it was bad. He appears to have minded it.
You also failed to link to Dawkins’ further writing on the issue, in which he acknowledges “the terrible, persistent and recurrent traumas suffered by other people when abused as children.” It should be no surprise that Dawkins feels this way, given that he donated £10,000 to the cause of having Pope Benedict stand trial for his role in covering up the massive Catholic priest child-abuse scandal.
Dawkins said that his own abuse was bad. He said others have fared far worse. He says the issue matters to him, and he put £10,000 of his own money where his mouth is. Yet any of your readers who were unfortunate enough to trust you without checking would believe that Dawkins said that “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.”
Especially given the subject matter, and the fact that Dawkins was abused himself, your misrepresentation here is particularly egregious. Victims of abuse do not deserve to have their stories twisted to serve an agenda. It is difficult for me to believe that your misrepresentation here was unintentional.
I did in fact link to Harris’s post. It’s the hyperlink under the words “Harris assumes.” And always has been.
You obviously didn’t even check.
Welcome to how bias works.
Meanwhile, your links don’t work, and don’t point to what you claim.
The actual link to The Blaze article is here:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/12/atheist-richard-dawkins-doubles-down-on-mild-pedophilia-claims-amid-furor/
It in turn links to the primary source, witch contains the actual words of Dawkins.
And you left out this part, even though it’s in the Blaze article:
That’s the statement I pointed out was false. And it is indeed false. And he would have known it was false, had he actually studied up on the issue before blurting an opinion about it.
My article above already answers you on why Harris needs to be more responsible a spokesperson. You did not even respond to the reasons I actually gave.
The actual link to Dawkins’ notpology is here:
https://richarddawkins.net/2013/09/child-abuse-a-misunderstanding-w-polish-translation/
He barely even apologizes for the error.
That he learned something from his critics is nice. But it doesn’t change anything I said: he didn’t research the facts before pronouncing opinions that assumed his experience was the same for everyone.
So you aren’t really contradicting anything my article actually said or argued.
Bravo. You get it!
As a woman scientist who has dealt with a lot of these strange assumptions about “what women are and can do”–instead of who I am and what I can do–I appreciate your demonstration of how to apply critical thinking to the issue of acceptance of feminism.
Example: a lecture on organization in which the speaker said: “Women carry around too much stuff, like keys they don’t have a use for. Who has a set of keys?”
I did.
“What does each one do?”
I told him.
“And that’s it?”
Yes. Does that make me not a woman?
Wow. That is the weirdest example I’ve heard yet!
Why would he think anyone carries keys they don’t use? I must be a woman by his definition because I carry a lot of keys. But that’s because I need all those keys. I actually use them. That’s why I carry them.
It’s astonishing such an obvious basic reality has to be explained to people.
Thank you so much for this article. The comments from many of the men here illustrate the need for more essays like this.
Dr. Carrier, thank you for your response to comment 13. The BS coming from Drudge16 is so pervasive and I’m SO tired of it. What really baffles me is how so many people are so bizarrely invested in the idea that men and women are “naturally,” “biologically,” inherently, irreconcilably, different. Why is it so important to them that this be true? – to the point that they feel the need to bleat about animal behavior any time anyone suggests that there might just possibly be societal influences on humans’ gender performances. I can’t figure out why they care so much that gender differences be preprogrammed and set in stone and unalterable.
They need to believe gender differences are biological so they can justify their sexism and not have to do anything about it.
If you admit that gender differences are a product of culture, then you have to admit our culture is sexist, and that you therefore need to be working to change that culture so that it no longer does this to men and women. And that means you have to change yourself, because you are a part of that culture. And that means admitting there is something wrong with you that needs repair. But there can’t be anything wrong with you. That would destroy your self-image as a totally swell guy or girl. Therefore your belief that gender differences are genetic has to be true.
Notably this is exactly the same egotistical status quo thinking that keeps believers resisting atheism: they also don’t want to admit the facts (the bible is immoral, contradictory, and factually inaccurate; their religion is toxic or unjustifiably silly; etc.), because doing so would mean they then have to do something about it, and that means admitting they have been duped by it and infected with harmful ideas by it, which entails admitting there is something wrong with them that needs repair. But there can’t be anything wrong with them. That would destroy their self-image as a totally swell guy or girl. Therefore their belief that atheism is false has to be true.
It’s amazing how some issues are simply untouchable. I tried to be balanced and show that I’m not absolutely certain of anything, that I’m open to change my mind, and thoroughly explain why it is that I have the impressions I have on the issue. I tried to contribute to the discussion in a constructive way. Apparently, some people are simply incapable of dealing with some issues like that. It seems like you, cressida, are the one that is so dogmatically attached to your beliefs, that you can’t possibly tolerate that they are questioned. People like you prevent the zeitgeist on these issues to take in objective scientific data, and change if necessary. Unlike you, I am very much aware my preconceptions and prejudices influence my thinking, which I like to think helps me to be fairer in engaging opposing viewpoints.
And I never said culture and societal stereotypes are irrelevant in determining male and female behaviour. Did you even bother to read what I said? “Preprogrammed and set in stone”? Does that refer to me? 0.o Reread my first paragraph!
The fact that there are systematic anatomical differences between the brains of men and women lead me to the (provisional) conclusion that gender differences in behaviour have a strong (but not exclusive) biological basis. The fact that the brain is highly sensitive to stimulation made me keep the possibility open that these anatomical differences are the results of differentiated stimulation on the brain. To have a more structured and thorough opinion on the issue, I will have to study it better. But I can definitely assure you that among psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists (both male and female) in my country, my opinion is very much the norm, so please excuse me for having an opinion that conforms to the scientific consensus that I know.
You and Dr. Carrier disagree, as well as Ms. Bernstein (skeptchick). That’s fine, and I’m open to the idea that I’m wrong, and will thus try to study the issue better, in the same way I’m doing for Christian and biblical history. A quick search on Amazon.com provides a picture very much similar to that of biblical studies; a field dominated by hard-core fundamentalists on both sides, hellbent on sticking to their opinions and worldview, having plenty of bile and acrimony to distribute to whoever disagrees with them even slightly. So I don’t foresee an easy task ahead. But hey, reality is complex and nuanced, and taking heed of it is complicated. However, for some people, reinforcing their beliefs and attacking whoever dares to offer alternative perspectives is all that matters.
Apparently you missed the part where you claimed Dawkins said “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.”
The statement “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.” contains two assertions:
1) Richard Dawkins claimed that being molested can’t be that bad.
2) Richard Dawkins said that he personally didn’t mind being molested.
In a world where the value of reasonableness actually has meaning, both of those assertions are false. (Dawkins’ claim that some forms of child molestation used to be normalized or ignored decades ago is both true and has little relevance to your false statement.)
You claimed that Richard Dawkins said that “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.” It shouldn’t be like pulling teeth to get you to admit that this claim is substantially false. Ethical people don’t hold on to false claims that they can’t support.
I see. You are stuck on the nitpicking trivia of what “didn’t mind it” means. Which has nothing to do with the point I made.
Nice way to avoid admitting the point I made was correct, by focusing on an unrelated matter of what I meant by how much it affected him (rather than my point, which was about his dismissing it having affected anyone worse).
I did not mean by “didn’t mind it” that he didn’t mind it at all. That hyperbole is coming from you. But since changing it to “he minded it a little” would have absolutely no effect on the point I was making, your focusing on this shows you are refusing to accept the actual point being made.
I suppose that the reason I, a secular atheist who runs a Secular Student Alliance chapter and my American University, want modern atheism to be divorced from Feminism is for many of the reasons Richard Carrier used as a defense for it.
Modern Feminism is not rooted in reality. There is absolutely no evidence for its most crucial claims, and overwhelming evidence against most of them. For example, the gender wage gap, it has been disproven dozens of times in dozens of different studies, and yet it continues to be quoted as if it is a reality. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303532704579483752909957472
Furthermore some of its most heavily repeated and fundamental claims, such as those in support of “The Patriarchy” and “Rape Culture” are absolutely non-scientific, non-verifiable, and non-quantifiable. In fact, the similarities between modern Feminism between modern Christianity are almost staggering. “Sin”, the invisible flaw inherent in all human beings has been replaced by “Patriarchy”. Can you prove it exists? Only using metaphors and half-truths. Yet the idea of Patriarchy, just like the idea of Sin is the very foundation of both these ideologies. We must first accept this badly defined, badly explained, unproven assumption or the rest of the ideology completely falls apart.
So what is “The Patriarchy”? Who takes part in it? Who created it? Give quantifiable evidence that it exists. You can ask 100 Feminists and they’ll all give you a different answer. The term is intentionally vague so that it can be all-encompassing. Furthermore, by challenging the idea of “The Patriarchy”, typically you elicit a very violent and negative reaction from modern Feminists, who then associate you with this idea, and call your brainwashed or accuse you of “Mansplaining”. A term, which from what I can tell, was created by modern Feminists in order to smear any ideas or opinions which contradicted with their own baseless ideology. In this sense, it’s much like Christians who accuse you of being under the control of Satan or a demon whenever you question or contradict their beliefs. They’ve come up with a catch-all defense to any objection you may have to a poisonous ideology that isn’t rooted in fact. And what is that defense? That you are part of the very idea that you’re challenging. Nothing in the world could be less intellectual than this.
Furthermore, the idea that we live in a “Patriarchal Society”, something which would still be difficult to quantify, can be easily challenged by many of the social structures and institutions which exist. For example, if our society is so overtly beneficial to men, then why do men have such a higher rate of incarceration and longer sentencing for the same crimes, why are the courts so much less likely to grant them custody to their own children, why do they have significantly higher rates of suicide, homelessness, and death on the job, why are their lifespans significantly shorter, why are they graduating college at a lower rates? These are just a few examples of dozens which contradict the idea that our society is somehow structured in a way that only benefits men. It’s a ridiculous and baseless claim. The term that should be used is intersectionality. In other words, both men and women experience privilege in different areas of their life. Intersectionality is entirely different than “The Patriarchy”.
Even renowned Feminists such as Christina Hoff Summers have declared that modern Feminism has become radicalized and unproductive. Taken over by voices which care nothing for equality, but are more determined to force the world to victimize themselves and force the world to placate to their demands, once again, in a very similar way as Christianity. In fact, she wrote a famous book called “The War Against Boys” which challenges the very foundation of modern Feminism, that women have it so much worse, and that our society is structured in such a way that only benefits men. Yet this book, and this entire argument has largely been ignored or forgotten by the radical Feminists that now permeate our culture. http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/
Finally, the whole idea of “Rape Culture” is absolute nonsense. Rape in the Western World is one of the most horrific and disgusting acts that a person can commit. If you are even accused of rape, you can lose your job, your career, be banned from college, and be treated as a leper by your entire community. Being labeled as a sex offender will put you on an official government list that you can never leave or wipe clean, and will show the entire country where you live, making you into a social outcast. Being proven guilty of rape provides some of the harshest sentencing in our entire justice system. In fact, in the eye of public opinion, rapists, especially child rapists, are seen as worse than thieves or even murderers.
So if we really are living in a “Rape Culture”, then why is our entire society and legal system structured in such a way that HEAVILY punishes and deters this kind of behavior, which simply being accused of can ruin your entire life? The facts just don’t add up. Let’s be clear, this is simple Feminist propaganda, as is the myth that 1 in 4 women are raped on college campus, and dozens of other baseless facts that continue to be repeated as if they are reality.
I’m sorry to say that I stand with the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world. Modern Feminism is poison and shouldn’t be associated with the secular humanism movement in any way, shape, or form. Movements such as “Women Against Feminism” have every right to exist, and good reasons for doing so. http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/
Modern Feminism hurts women much more than it helps them. It is uncompromising, anti-intellectual, and baseless. I reject it for the very same reasons I reject Christianity. I haven’t seen the evidence and I find the claims and tactics disingenuous at best.
http://rachaellefler.hubpages.com/hub/Feminist-Beliefs-I-No-Longer-Agree-With
Everything this antifeminist rant says is easily discovered to be false with just ten minutes surfing Google on each point. Because these claims have been refuted many times already.
So advice to everyone, don’t just believe this guy. Be a good skeptic and look for the refutations of each point already online. And then decide what reality is.
Lol Richard, instead of addressing any of my arguments simply says “Google the refutations”, as if that’s the kind of argument or behavior that would hold any kind of weight in the intellectual community. He even does this in spite of the fact that I post 4 sources within my argument, which he makes no attempt to address.
This is the issue I have with Feminism. When presented with the facts, there is no logical response or explanation. It’s just some BS red herring that has no place within the world of intellectual discourse. Do you know who else commonly tells me to “Google the refutations”? Christians. Christians tell me to Google refutations to logical arguments made against them all the time. I agree with Mr. Carrier. Do your own research, come to your own conclusions. Don’t just consume the easily disproven dogma of modern Feminist ideology.
And yet, all those claims have indeed already been refuted, and anyone who cares to be informed can indeed easily find that out.
You can whine and moan about the fact that it is your responsibility to get educated and check claims before believing assertions. But that just makes you look like a lazy fool.
I think brinning up Hoff Summers as a ‘good and rational feminist’ is equals to brinning up Hitler and nazis. She is clearly out of date with her knowledge and only people that lift her up to pedestal are the mra/mrm folk who just spout talking points.
And when talking about whom you can trust, Summers never mentions that her notions of gender and feminism are not part of consensus of relevant people. That itself should be enough to skeptic to be very critical of her claims.
Adam, I think your claims are too ridiculous to waste time on addressing. (But, I’ll go ahead and waste some of mine; not for your sake but for the sake of practicing my own arguments.) Take this for example: “‘Sin’, the invisible flaw inherent in all human beings has been replaced by ‘Patriarchy’. Can you prove it exists? Only using metaphors and half-truths.”
Right off the bat, I can sense an issue with your use of the word “prove.” I get a feeling that you’re setting an awfully high bar to where I’m guessing that I can’t “prove” it. I am left to wonder if I could even prove my name is Leo Buzalsky (or if you could prove your name is Adam Hamby) by whatever standard you’re setting. But, I can certainly provide evidence and it’s not even that hard!
We can start by looking at the definition of the word: “a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.” Now, this makes me think of someone who called into The Atheist Experience within the last couple of months. He pulled up a definition very close to this and tried to argue that it couldn’t be true because women are allowed to vote and, by golly, women make up 51% of the population. Ergo, patriarchy doesn’t exist! Because obviously voting is the only avenue to power! So never mind that we’ve never had a female president. Obviously, we could have one if women simply wanted one since they have all that voting power. These last few sentences were sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell. That’s because there’s a logical error here known as “cherry picking.” But, OK, let’s put that aside and let’s go back 100+ years when women didn’t have the right to vote. If that’s enough for you, then what is?
Further in, I see a double standard. First, for the patriarchy, you say, “some of its most heavily repeated and fundamental claims…are absolutely non-scientific, non-verifiable, and non-quantifiable.” But then as “evidence” against rape culture, you say, “our entire society and legal system is structured in such a way that it HEAVILY punishes and deters this kind of behavior, which simply being accused of can ruin your entire life.” I’m focusing mostly on the words “heavily” and “ruin.” You do realize that is “non-scientific, non-verifiable, and non-quantifiable”?
There are other such contradictions where you claim patriarchy “is intentionally vague so that it can be all-encompassing.” Yet, you somehow think that asking “if our society is so overtly beneficial to men, then why do men have such a higher rate of incarceration and longer sentencing for the same crimes?” is somehow an argument against this “patriarchy” that you said yourself is vaguely defined. So what’s going on here? Well, it becomes rather obvious, actually. You have apparently defined patriarchy to be something specific, and then you knocked down your own definition of patriarchy (whatever that definition is). We have a term for that; it’s called a straw man.
There are a few other errors in your rant, too, including at least one…I guess you could call it a “category error.” “Being labeled as a sex offender will put you on an official government list that you can never leave or wipe clean, and will show the entire country where you live, making you into a social outcast.” The big problem here is that, from what I am aware, most people who get labeled as sex offenders were found to be sexually abusing children, not adult women. And you plop this in the middle of a paragraph, apparently in an attempt to use this as your evidence, of how rape accusations against adult women ruin one’s life. Sorry, you’re going to need to present some statistics on how many of these sex offenders get labeled as such for having been accused of raping women. Better yet, you really need to show what percentage of adult men accused of raping women get labeled as sex offenders. Because if it turns out that it’s only, say, 10% of such people, then it becomes clear that you’re exaggerating the situation. This, too, goes back to the double standard; you didn’t provide us with scientific, verifiable, nor quantifiable information.
With that, I’ll take some more time to tackle one of your articles, and I’ll take on the one from Hoff Summers. Really, one doesn’t even need to Google any of the claims. Even if we assume most of the claims made in the article are true, it doesn’t lead to the conclusion that feminism is “radical” or “a poison.” (Oh, I am also amused that you take Hoff Summers at her word that she’s a feminist. I suppose you also believe Lee Strobel and other Christian apologists at their word when they claim they used to be atheists. But I digress…)
Myth 1: She states, “Moreover, in African countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and Burundi.” OK, so this tells us that the 1% figure is too small. You think 11% is acceptable??? And 54% is the best number they could find? I get the implication here; it is that Western and Asian countries should have better numbers because we have supposedly made more progress. But this really raises the question of why don’t they then just provide those numbers instead? Your skeptical senses should be tingling at this; mine are. At best this corrects some misinformation; it does not exclude a need for feminism.
Myth #2: “This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists.” Hmmm…notice what’s missing from that list? Feminists. (Also, the people referenced as spreading the myth? Not necessarily feminists.) Personally, I’ve seen that pushed by conservative Christians more than anyone else. (And you know why? They use it for fundraising, claiming they have a solution! These people just need to hear the Good News of Jesus!) So, I’m largely just ignoring this one because I’m not convinced that this is a “feminist myth.” Might feminists use this myth? Sure! What? You expect every feminist to be debunking every claim they ever hear? I think you set the bar a bit high for feminists, then. They’re only human, you know? They’ve never claimed to be otherwise as far as I’m aware!
Myth #3: “Of these, approximately 37% were attacked by intimates.” Oh, so all that was “wrong” with this “myth” was that some wording appears to have been dropped off. It says “In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms do so because of domestic violence” when it really should have said something like “In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms for violence related injuries do so because of domestic violence.” OK, so something got lost in translation. That happens. So this is more of a miscommunication than a myth. (And how can I be sure feminists are to blame for the miscommunication? Have you noticed, as with Myth #2, that Hoff Summers hasn’t actually cited any feminists spouting these myths???)
Myth 4 is pretty straightforward. It says in the article itself that this is more insufficient research than anything else. That doesn’t make it a myth. It’s fine to point out that the studies are highly flawed and that the statistic shouldn’t be lied upon so heavily. But that doesn’t mean feminism is misguided or anything. If that were the case, then atheism is misguided for how often atheist have used that crappy prison study that shows that only 1% (or less?) of the US prison population is atheist. So I’ll take this one as useful information, but little else.
Myth #5: The error here, I think, is a bit tougher to spot. The error would appear to be in the assumptions that are necessary to make the claim. Per the article, “It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.” The problem I see is that, in order to account for such differences, you must first assume that women are not discriminated against. One cannot then use the results and say, “There is no pay gap; therefore, women are not discriminated against.” That becomes circular logic.
Let’s take this hypothetical: A woman has been working at a software firm for 15 years. She is in an entry-level position making $60,000 per year. A man has been working at this same software firm for 5 years. He is also in an entry-level position making $60,000 per year. Would accounting for such factors result in claiming that there is no wage gap here? It seems to me that the answer is “Yes,” and I have a problem with that. Why is this woman who has been working there for 15 years still in an entry-level position?
Note, too, that the article also states, “Activist groups like the National Organization for Women have a fallback position: that women’s education and career choices are not truly free—they are driven by powerful sexist stereotypes.” Richard addressed this in his post above. He’s provided some of the evidence that shows that this is a fact.
Alright, I’ve wasted enough of my time as is. I’ll just finish by largely agreeing with Richard that you do look like a lazy fool. Where I’ll sort of “disagree” with Richard is that I don’t think the problem is necessarily being informed; I suspect, based on the logical errors mentioned above, that the problem is that you need better logic and critical thinking skills. You should see if your university offers any such courses and see if you can take some of them.
toronto gay, I think you are failing to distinguish between “Sam Harris repeated a false sexist trope” and “Sam Harris is a sexist”. The first proposition is the one Dr. Carrier makes and defends under the heading “The Failure of Harris”. The second proposition is the one you seem to be objecting to. As far as I’m concerned, it could hardly matter less whether Harris is a sexist. I’d rather he be a sexist who doesn’t repeat false sexist tropes than a non-sexist who does. What matters to me is that what he said was harmful and false, and his failure to recognize that.
Just to be clear, DrewVogel, in a certain context I would say Harris is a sexist because he defends sexist tropes (he doesn’t just repeat them), even though he is not aware of the fact that these things he is defending are sexist; although even if he just repeated them, he would be a sexist, because he would be an unwitting part of the sexist machine of culture, until when their inaccuracy was exposed he abandoned them, then he would cease to be a sexist (or gradually become less of one).
But I would only say that if I were using “sexist” in the unintentional/subconscious sense, in which possibly even I am still a little bit of a sexist, if there are still sexist attitudes or beliefs in me that I haven’t discovered and thus worked to expel.
However, I know that most people mistakenly think “sexist” means intentional/conscious sexism, hence my point about Harris, black and white thinking, and the president of Turkey. So I try to avoid saying “so-and-so is a sexist” unless I also explain what I mean by that (whether a conscious/intentional sexist, or an unconscious/unintentional sexist).
I recommend this to everyone as a general practice. Especially since even just saying “he says sexist things / he acts on sexist beliefs / etc.” people mistakenly hear as saying “he is a sexist” since they don’t know about or think about the distinction you just made, either. So the confusion persists, again. Unless you dispel it by addressing it up front.
Of course, lots of people are idiots, and don’t even listen to you when you do address it up front and make all these distinctions clear from the word go. As this comments thread shows. But as long as you did cover it, and they are really just ignoring what you said, then that just makes them look like idiots. You can only do your due diligence. After that, all failures to listen to you are on them, IMO.
But also, I think it would be fair to say anyone who makes a constant good faith effort to clear themselves of sexist attitudes and beliefs, and thus can be reasonably expected to do so if any such is pointed out as still infecting them, should also not be called a sexist, unless again you also make that distinction clear, and thus explain how you are using the word, and that you aren’t implying they are stubbornly unintentionally sexist, but are productively anti-sexist.
Richard,
It’s astonishing that you consider pointing out blatant misrepresentation as “nitpicking.”
Dawkins said this:
And you represented this as Dawkins saying that “being molested can’t be that bad because he didn’t mind it.”
This is the kind of error you should have fixed as soon as you were made aware of it. Instead, you continue to misrepresent the experience of a victim of child molestation. You are not giving Richard Dawkins the right to his own experience. You are erasing his own clearly communicated feelings and replacing them with a false version that you prefer. Is there something special about Dawkins that makes him deserve this kind of treatment by you?
Are there other victims of child molestation whom you would similarly misrepresent?
Is this not an issue that, in your opinion, requires care when writing about it?
This is, indeed, a nitpick.
It has nothing to do with my argument. (Correcting your nitpick changes nothing I said as to my point in mentioning it or my conclusion.) And it hinges solely on a subjective and hyperbolic, black-and-white interpretation of what counts as not minding something.
You don’t have a relevant point here.
Get over it.
drewvogel,
There is something about combat that attracts more men than women.
There is something about combativeness that also attracts more men than women.
Disagree?
toronto gay @22
Sorry for the tardy replay. I seem to have lost track of this particular discussion.
I neither agree nor disagree. I’m dubious of those claims, but I don’t know. They sound like reasonable hypotheses that might help explain observed discrepancies between men and women relative to combat and combativeness, but I can think of other possibilities. In my admittedly quite limited experience, I find that cultural factors, not biological factors, tend to better explain such phenomena.
I’ve noticed, RIchard, that you have failed to answer a question that you expected Sam Harris to answer perfectly when put on the spot at a live event.
Harris was asked about the readership of his books — signing and reading events were just an extension of that. Harris largely has nothing to do with atheist conferences, so your attempt to install him as a leader of atheist conferences falls flat. He’s an author, not an advocate for, as he dismissively calls it, “atheism as a political identity.”
So let’s stay on topic. This isn’t about conferences to which Harris pays no attention. This is about his readership. Let’s take his first book, The End of Faith. Let’s take the first week’s sales. This is before many people knew much at all about Sam Harris. Buyers of the book are just going off the title, the subject matter, the publisher’s description of the book, perhaps some reviews, perhaps seeing Harris talk about the book on TV. The buyers are responding to, essentially, the appeal of the book.
And those buyers were probably something like 75% men.
Why?
Except that Harris’s only data point are women coming to his events (you just made up a bullshit statistic; no one, not even his publisher, has data on the gender breakdown of who buys his books). So either women don’t like him, or they don’t come to his events for the same reason they don’t come to other atheist events. Take your pick.
And worse for you, he responded on his blog in detail in such a way as to make clear he does mean women in the movement as a whole and not just women reacting to his books.
Steersman @7,
Believe it or not we make it a habit not to discuss toilet habits and techniques with complete strangers and frankly it’s a very creepy and inappropriate thing for you to ask. We’ve made our preferences known and now the choice is yours as to whether to afford us basic respect or not. Know this though. Your choice of labels (and insults) that you apply to others says far more about you than your targets.
As for being delusional… Do you always go around flinging totally unprovoked (and ableist) insults or are you making an exception just for us?
As to your responding elsewhere… Given how you’ve treated us so far here in the broad daylight of FtB there is really no good reason to expect anything but more insults and deliberate open mockery in the dark alley that is the pit. Thanks but no thanks.
Plethora (#24A):
One might argue that you’re asking for substantially more than just “basic respect”.
“unprovoked”? You think that more or less demanding that you be dealt with as a plurality doesn’t qualify as a “provocation”?
🙂 Now that is actually quite clever and amusing. Mind if I quote you there on that? 🙂
But while it’s clever & amusing, I don’t think it’s particularly accurate. Seems to me that one is more likely to be “knifed in the back” in places like Pharyngula – as more than a few have found to their misfortune – than in the Pit.
“Seems to me that one is more likely to be “knifed in the back” in places like Pharyngula – as more than a few have found to their misfortune – than in the Pit.”
That is the most astonishing bullshit claim ever.
There is nothing even remotely comparable on PZ’s comments section to the horrible things said about people in the Slymepit.
OK, Drudge #17:
You write (a) “Unlike you, I am very much aware my preconceptions and prejudices influence my thinking”
and a few paragraphs later (b) “The fact that there are systematic anatomical differences between the brains of men and women lead me to the (provisional) conclusion that gender differences in behaviour have a strong (but not exclusive) biological basis.”
(b) pretty much disproves (a), because there are not “systematic anatomical differences between the brains of men and women,” so if you think there are, that belief pretty much has to be a result of your “preconceptions and prejudices.”
Go read Delusions of Gender and then come back and try to justify the putative positions of “psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists (both male and female) in my country.”
jfc.
Slight correction to Cressida: there are some anatomical differences between “male” and “female” brains, but (a) only on average, hence they cross sexes (e.g. trans women who are assigned male at birth often show female brain anatomical features even if they otherwise have male anatomy, and many cis men will have some female brain anatomical features, etc.) and (b) they are not very numerous or large (in fact brain anatomy is more different from individual to individual than on average from male to female) and (c) they have never been linked to any significant difference in cognition or behavior.
Not even hormone differences do so: no difference in cognition produced by hormone shift tracks greater than 10% between male and female, e.g. women experience emotions more intensely than men only at a variance of 10%, so many women are less emotional than the average man, and many men are more emotional than the average woman–the peaks of their bell curves in the population are only distant by a factor of 10%. Expression of emotionality varies far more, due to enculturation (men are taught to hide their feelings, women are not). But expression disguises actual intensity and frequency of affect.
And your comment shows quite clearly the ideological basis of your stance. The differences between the brains of men and women are part of standard neuroscience education. For example, excerpt from pages 1321-1323 of this book:
“Are structural differences between the brains of male and female mammals also present in humans and, if so, might they be functionally important? Early studies revealed that a few structures are markedly larger in men: Onuf’s nucleus in the spinal cord, the homolog of the spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus in rodents; the BNST, implicated in rodent mating behavior; and the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus 3 (INAH3), related to the rodent SDN- POA discussed earlier.
Advances in high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and genetic technology have uncovered more subtle structural and molecular dimorphisms in the central nervous system. For example, structures such as the fronto-orbital cortex and several gyri— including the precentral, superior frontal, and lingual gyri—occupy a significantly larger volume in adult women compared to a cohort of adult men. Moreover, the frontomedial cortex, amygdala, and angular gyrus volumes are larger in men compared to women. Thus there are likely to be many sexual dimorphisms in the human brain.
What remains unclear is how these dimorphisms arise and how they relate to behavior. They might arise early from the organizational effects of hormones, or later as a result of experience. Structural differences arising before or soon after birth could underlie behavioral differences, whereas structural differences that arise later in life might be results of dimorphic behaviors.”
Did you notice the nuances in the text? That’s how such a subject should be discussed.
The least you could have done was check Wikipedia. You may think that every single word there is wrong, but it would at least show you immediately that my position is not, by any means, fringe. But luckily Richard has elucidated some aspects for you, already. I plan on reading the book you mention, the same mentioned in the skepchick article Richard linked to. The reviews on that book, among others, lead me to make the comment I did about “bile and acrimony”.
You are a prime example of how “for some people, reinforcing their beliefs and attacking whoever dares to offer alternative perspectives is all that matters.” Anti-intellectualism at its best.
As an atheist, a humanist, and a woman, thank you for this speech.
Hey, Richard, I’m only half way through the post, but so far I find it really great. The “Fear of Feminism” section is how I wish I could word my own thoughts on this and other issues. Well done.
Otherwise, I stopped to comment because of this: “Enter the debate. Consider all sides fairly. Look at the evidence. That’s how you approach debates in atheism. You don’t steer clear of atheism because of it. You remain an atheist in spite of it.”
While it is true I remain an atheist, I did want to comment that it has been really discouraging to remain a part of movement atheism when I encounter atheists debating poorly. At first it was the anti-feminist atheists like Thunderf00t. Now it’s getting to be the “conservative” atheists like Dave Silverman who imply that they only issue they have with the Republican party is that they are too religious. (Hmmm…now that I think about it, I’d really like to ask Silverman if he honestly believes it is Christian religion that is keeping Republicans from accepting climate change and not other ideology, like commitment to capitalism.) This has been a bit frustrating because they don’t seem to actually present any argument for being a conservative atheist; it seems to just be about saying that such atheists exist. OK, but then why should I be part of an organization that is inclusive to such people?
Anyway, I don’t want to get too much off topic, but that is part of why I’m beginning to embrace the label of “humanist” much more than atheist these days. Still an atheist, of course, but it’s just become too broad of a label.
Why not have a one-to-one with Karen Straughan, men’s rights activist, and general all-round anti feminist. I daresay it’d be a right brilliant exchange.
I doubt it. I don’t know her work. But so far in my experience, all full-on anti-fems I’ve ever encountered enough of to evaluate are dishonest, emotionally unstable delusionoids, with whom no productive conversation is ever possible. Which is why there has never been one. With any of them.
It is funny to me how Richard “Dick the Intellectual Artillery” Carrier continues to peddle his completely unlettered rants about atheism and feminism whilst the ruins of his career and atheism+ sit resoundingly around him. With no distinction to his career, a failed marriage on the basis of infidelity (cuck much) and selling books out the back of a van style peasantry to supplement his laughably small income. I enjoy popping back here from time to time to see if you are still breathing and as combative and nonsensical in your comments as you always have been. Keep it real Dick, I hope you continue to entertain me for a while longer
My career is doing quite well and on the up. My lovelife is great. And all the goals of Atheism Plus are being met.
The ruins are of your fucked up worldview and its futile dreams of conquering the world.
It is funny seeing someone in that delusional bubble thinking it’s the other way around. Even funnier to see them think they don’t look like a ridiculous fool when they say stupid childish shit like you just did.
@OP
Bravo.
Just de-lurking to say that I thought this was an excellent argument.
It’s actually a little bit irritating that I can’t think of a single pertinent addition, complaint, quibble, or disagreement.
Drudge16 says:
Why do these differences you claim lead you to this particular conclusion? Have you even bothered to educate yourself on the function of these particular parts of the brain of which you are speaking? Why are you sure that the parts of the brain that have these anatomical differences you are speaking of control behavior? Are you aware that behavior is not the only thing the brain asserts any influence over? Much of our basic biological functioning is also regulated either directly or indirectly by the brain. In summary, I don’t understand why it is that you conclude that these anatomical differences in brains of females and males produces the behaviorial differences you conclude they do, especially given that you offer no evidence or argument that the areas where these alleged differences exist have any causal connection to behavior.
Very valid points. Yes, many differences are, indeed, probably related mainly to the control of the physiology of the genitals, and so on. No, I have not bothered to educate myself on this subject, not deeply, anyway. Check my original comment (#13) and my response to cressida (#17) for greater contextualisation. The Wikipedia article on the subject is also quite enlightening, in my view (even if you end up disagreeing)
I was seeking to raise a concern that I felt was important for the discussion. In the environment I grew up (my father is a Biologist), considering evolutionary explanations for human behaviour in general, and for gender-specific behaviour in particular, was perfectly normal. Every book (for young people) I read on Biology and Evolution, when discussing the human species, would take for granted a biological core for the differences in behaviours between men and women. At a later age, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins and every other populariser of Biology I have ever read or heard also discussed the subject in a similarly biological and evolutionary manner. I saw many documentaries (teenage obsession) about the biology of sex and gender, and they also took these differences for granted, and sought to explain them in evolutionary terms.
The educated classes in my country are left-leaning. Psychologists are even more to the left. They are the scientific pillar of the intelectual vanguard for the social acceptance of homosexuality and transsexuality. Furhtermore, most psychologists are, by far, women. Yet, against every ideological impulse in them, I have never heard a single psychologist that denied the biological basis of behavioural differences between the genders. I have directly asked a few, and never had a different answer. The word “proven” was freq
Very valid points. Yes, many differences are related mainly to the control of the physiology of the genitals, and so on. No, I have not bothered to educate myself on this subject, not deeply, anyway. Check my original comment (#13) and my first (#17) and second (#25) responses to cressida for greater contextualisation. The Wikipedia article on the subject is also quite enlightening, in my view (even if you end up disagreeing with it). The (in?)famous article by Ed Clint defending the field of Evolutionary Psychology in response to a presentation by Rebecca Watson (from skepchick, incidentally) is also a must read.
I was seeking to raise a concern that I felt was important for the discussion, that’s all.
In the environment I grew up (my father is a Biologist), considering evolutionary explanations for human behaviour in general, and for gender-specific behaviour in particular, was perfectly normal. Every book for young people I read on Biology and Evolution, when discussing the human species, would take for granted a biological core for the differences in behaviours between men and women. At a later age, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins and every other populariser of Biology I have ever read or heard also discussed the subject in a similar manner. I saw many documentaries (teenage obsession) about the biology of sex and gender, and they also took these differences for granted, and sought to explain them in evolutionary terms.
The educated classes in my country are left-leaning. Psychologists are even more to the left. They are also the scientific pillar of the intelectual vanguard for the social acceptance of homosexuality and transsexuality, so not a conservative class, by any standard. Furthermore, most psychologists are, by far, women. Yet, I have never heard a single psychologist that denied the biological basis of behavioural differences between the genders. I have directly asked a few, and never had a different answer. The word “proven” was frequently used. None of them is even remotely bothered by this.
Over the years, I came across numerous news on the neurological differences between men and women, and how they may explain certain differentiated behaviours. I remember, in particular, an interview with a female Neurologist in the NYTimes (not exactly a conservative newspaper), discussing precisely this issue. My apologies for not linking it, but sadly I couldn’t find it. One sentence stuck with me. When asked “Are there differences between the brains of men and women?”, she answered “Yes, and the more we look, the more we find.” (I’m paraphrasing, obviously).
These are the reasons why I’m under the impression conveyed in the previous comments. Not a proof, by any means, but an explanation of sorts.
Cheers.
Additional comment: I guess I ended up not answering your question directly. The main neurological gender difference in brain function with behavioural consequences I was aware of is the <i<corpus callosum, the size of which is on average larger in women than in men. This has historically been thought to correlate well with the greater lateralisation of male brains when compared to female brains. This, in turn, was used to tentatively explain why men tend to be less emotional and more objective than women in certain situations, and women more capable of executing several tasks simultaneously. Feel free to correct me. According to Wikipedia, this is a classical view, somewhat supported by modern research.
Note that no study shows an average difference in emotionality between genders greater than 10%. In fact, in terms of emotions felt and frequency, they are at parity. Only intensity diverges, and yet, it diverges on average only 10% in intensity measures. Which is so small a variance that it is actually invisible to you and me (you can only find it with a huge sweeping study). Hence the Jamie Bernstein article about bell curves is such essential reading.
What you and I see instead are culturally driven variations in acceptable expression of emotion. Men don’t cry. That’s culturally enforced (often brutally; bullying and parental abuse are often deployed to reinforce it). So men learn not to. They internalize the emotion instead. But they feel it just as intensely. Likewise a woman who doesn’t cry when expected is denigrated as cold, etc. Thus, men and women are enculturated to hide or express their feelings differently. When we assume that’s as it should be, then it becomes sexism.
Note also that the 10% variance in emotional intensity has a far more obvious and well tested causal explanation in hormone variation (including actual controlled experiments: people altering their hormone ratios and observing the outcome). It therefore is extremely unlikely to have any explanation in brain anatomy. Hormone levels also vary on a bell curve in the population, so people who emote very intensely are rare (even among women), but likewise their hormone levels will be correspondingly extreme.
Adam @19
When you offer up evidence in the form of a link to support a statement, it would be helpful and much appreciated if it were a link to a source we can actually read in full and not to something that sits behind a paywall. Your link to the WSJ article about the gender wage gap is absolutely useless as support since those of us who don’t have a subscription to the WSJ can’t actually access the article, read it, and compose a response.
Adam Hamby @19:
Totally irrelevant remark as part of your response, since Dr. Carrier, nor anyone else here, ever said or implied that this organization or any others like don’t have a right to exist. The fact that the women in this organization and those featured on the website don’t want or need feminism is not an argument against the statement that feminism is an essential part of humanism and that it is needed as a social force to bring equality for all women, even those who don’t think they need it.
This is all true and I guess I considered it to round down to “no difference,” but, that’s probably why you’re the one with the Ph.D. ha.
There’s another point too; while (extremely limited, as noted) anatomical differences have been found, they’re not necessarily innate. Male and female humans are socialized differently literally from the womb onwards, and this affects the brain as it develops. So, far from being a *justification* for sexism, these (again, extremely limited) brain differences are at least partially a *result* of sexism.
Also a good point. Indeed, environment changes the brain. In fact, we have demonstrated, culture changes the brain. Thus measured brain differences might be the result of sexist cultures, not genetic dimorphism.
This is actually one of the many fatal criticisms of EvoPsych in general: they almost never control for this variable, and leap to conclusions without verifying a genetic basis. Of course, another of the many fatal criticisms of EvoPsych in general is that they pretty much never verify that their explanation for genetic differences is even remotely at all true; another of the many fatal criticisms of EvoPsych in general is that they almost always fail to verify a difference persists across all cultures; and so on and so on; this is what makes it almost entirely a pseudoscience, on a par with astrology and phrenology; I say almost because there are some tiny few examples of legit science being done in the field, but almost none of that concerns human gender differences.
But that’s a rant for another day.
Update: Added some links, plus the following…
The myth about atheists once was that atheists are communists. To declare yourself an atheist, subjected you to bigoted assumptions everywhere that you were not just a communist, but a fan of the Soviet Union even. But that was never true. It was true of some atheists; but not of atheism, nor of most atheists. Do you have to endorse communism to openly declare yourself an atheist? Obviously not. You can be any kind of atheist you want. And still be an out and proud atheist.
Feminism gets exactly the same sham treatment atheism does. You don’t have to agree with every feminist; just as you don’t have to agree with every atheist. And you don’t have to buy into the myths about either. You can instead break them, by showing the world what your feminism looks like, just as you can do for your atheism.