I <3 r/atheism

Atheism doesn't just have a sexism problem online. It has a ton of problems. It can't even let other atheists have their own opinions. It encourages mean, insulting and dismissive behavior, while complaining about mean, insulting and dismissive behavior.

The latter, I think, is worse than the former simply because the former can't even be addressed without the latter getting in the way. Not only that, but there are some pretty big names that make up this cold bloc of dismissive, arrogant people. In just a day, I lost respect for at least two people who are very well known in the skeptical community and who have had a huge influence on me. I suppose the bigger the pedestal, the harder they fall. My bad; I will remember not to put people up there next time.

It wasn't even that the disagreement was all that big of a deal. I saw certain jokes as pathetic and crude and the other person saw them as threatening. I saw this person post another joke that I thought was pathetic and crude and wondered how she thought it was funny, considering her opinion on the other jokes. After asking for her to clarify (which she did in a very dismissive, reactionary way), she called me a name in a totally passive-aggressive follow-up tweet. So I wrote about it on r/atheism. And I called her a bitch, because she deserved being called names more than I did, with her shitty behavior. It wasn't even that I was defending the jokes she didn't like, it was simply the fact that I disagreed with her that started the whole thing.

I got a lot of support from r/atheism. I even had people very eloquently explain their differing viewpoints. And then the Atheist high and mighties released their hounds. I saw posts down voted to oblivion for no reason other than they agreed with me, by people sent from a blog far away in the cold Midwest. The posts voted down weren't insulting, they weren't threatening. It was simply time to shut them up and let the lock-step take care of me.

The most poignant part of this whole thing, I think, is that people were calling me lazy, sexist, misogynist and a number of other things just for holding my own opinion (which wasn't even very far from her own)! Most of the people doing so were saying things like, go back to your plumbing work and how would I feel if I were a woman or if i had been raped? (I have been sexually abused by a significant other in mu past, for the record, and I'd be glad to talk about it. I know an honest rape threat when I see one). They were using insults against me as if I were a male because they couldn't tell from my username and just assumed I was. So in the end, I had sexism directed at me by these people calling me a sexist. That, my friends, is sad.

But r/atheism, you showed me that you can be different. I almost didn't join reddit because I heard on this person's blog how mean you were to women, but you were nice to me and she wasn't. Keep doing what you're doing. I love you, r/atheism. Thank you for the support.

Priorities

I really like that non-believers are getting out there and able to say, "Hey, we're here and we're not immoral, evil, baby-eating freaks, we just need to see some more evidence before we jump on your band wagon and start praising Jesus or Allah or whomever!" It's even nice to see the various atheist/humanist groups not get along on things because dissension and discussion is so important to growth, learning, knowledge, wisdom, humanity itself. That being said, I am a human with my own opinions and have every right to state such opinions on my own blog whether I think anyone will care to read them or not. So here goes.

I don't really care if a cross-beam from the World Trade Center gets put in a museum. I find myself objecting to a lot of the lawsuits that American Atheists bring out, carrying the flag of the ACLU. I love the ACLU and appreciate that American Atheists can be credited with getting the word out that closet atheists or skeptics aren't alone, but there are more important things to be fighting against.

A bunch of people in a country made up mostly of Christians found comfort in a cross at the World Trade Center after a horrific, terrifying and tragic event. Regardless of the fact that "it's a religious symbol," it's there. It's part of that day, it's part of that history. Bring to the museum some things that people from other religions (or non-religions) found comfort in and have a multitude of symbols that everyone can look at and say, "Wow, different people find comfort in different things." That, to me, is win-win. This lawsuit just isn't worth it when you have places like Texas that want to pull Thomas Jefferson out of their textbooks and put in John Calvin in his place as a Founding Father. It's nothing but a distraction from the fact that women in some states are being forced by law to carry zygotes in their bodies because that state has determined that it can decide and legislate moral and philosophical questions about the origin of life based on a book written by superstitious desert nomads from the Middle East.

Humanism, secularism and atheism should be concentrating on these glaring issues facing us today, not possibly setting a legal precedent by losing cases like the WTC museum lawsuit. It's irritating to think that real church/state separation issues are getting less spotlight than the bickering of street names ("Seven in Heaven") and cross-beams. If secularism is going to be a movement, they should start by picking their priorities.

Empowering Women

It's interesting to me how Christians have tried to co-opt feminism and rebrand it as women taking on the old, submission roles and loving it no matter what, damnit. Womens' jobs are still housework and child-rearing while men are reminded how they are the stronger sex, the leaders, the head of the household and need to be responsible with this awesome power and use it to support their meek little wives.

Kirk Cameron's Marriage Strengthening Event was infiltrated by Annie Thomas writing for Friendly Atheist. Was there anything useful at all to marriages? Apparently, not. It's the same old, "submit to your husband," stuff that they've been spouting for hundreds of years, but it's now dressed up as "empowerment" through subservience.

Whenever he referred to how hard a woman worked during the day, it was always in reference to her cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children — never to a woman’s professional life.

Would you expect anything less? Now that I myself am married, I can look forward to...giving up the career I found that I love, stop going to school and just clean up after my husband? And since his employment in academia means he gets the whole summer off, we can just both do nothing until I start squirting out children and hope the tax break will pay our rent. God will drop us an extra welfare check or something, right?

So there you have it folks, feminism in the twenty-first century! Stay weak, stay at home, stay married no matter what. God says so.