Atheism+ meets the Haters
So I’m still no closer to joining the nascent Atheism+ movement, although every day I’m hating the greater atheist community a little bit more. Seriously, if you’re already identifying as a secular humanist or skeptic or even agnostic I really wouldn’t try to sell you on atheism right now, because holy fuck they can be annoying.
Richard Dawkins is involving himself only passive-aggressively in this fight, through selective retweets and non-specific comments, which doesn’t do much for my opinion of the man. As someone said somewhere “I prefer the actually aggressive Dawkins to the passive-aggressive one”.
Here’s something Dawkins (along with 160 others) felt was worth retweeting recently:
I’m a woman & an atheist blogger, & never experienced sexist abuse from fellow atheists. Maybe because I don’t assume they’re misogynists?
— Lucy Wainwright (@Whoozley) August 27, 2012
Call me a radical man-hating feminist, but that seems a bit rough to me, rather like saying that sexist abuse is caused by the flawed perceptions of the victims of such abuse. Obviously I wasn’t the only one to notice this.
@crutchley Not-so-subtly compare me to a rape victim blamer. Instantly don’t like you. See how this works?
— Lucy Wainwright (@Whoozley) August 27, 2012
So first she strongly implied that the very real sexist abuse being complained about by certain prominent women in the movement is actually caused by them, then when someone suggested this was victim blaming, she got defensive and reacted as though they had suggested she was a rape-apologist. She then reported this back to Dawkins casting herself as the victim of hate messages:
@richarddawkins Precisely. For example, I won’t be blaming the fact that I’ve just been serially compared to rape victim blamers on atheism.
— Lucy Wainwright (@Whoozley) August 27, 2012
And Lucy is one of the nicer examples of the many people currently heaping endless contempt on the idea of a bunch of progressive atheists trying to build something new on one simple premise (no gods) and a bunch of shared social values. The fact that Dawkins would retweet her shitty comment doesn’t reflect well on him or the movement that reveres him. He still thinks that he’s the one that got the roughest deal after elevatorgate.
- What people are saying to Richard Dawkins right now
- What people are saying to Rebecca Watson right now
At time of writing Dawkins has to put up with people telling him how awesome he is, and thanking him for his tireless awesomeness especially for standing against the terrible Atheism+ bullies. Whereas Rebecca has trolls hounding her, calling her a liar, and still picking fights over her outrageous suggestion of more than a year ago that guys abstain from hitting on women in elevators. Also they proudly bitch about being blocked by her, because they seriously believe she has an obligation to listen to their spite until the end of time.
So yeah, I’m starting to think maybe “secular humanist” isn’t such a bad label after all.
I don’t know about starting a movement based on atheism. Just because someone is an atheist doesn’t mean they share the same values or are rational. My favourite example is one of my wife’s friends who is an atheist and yet believes some of the most ridiculous conspiracy theories out there.
Also as you have pointed out, the stuff I see on twitter and elsewhere doesn’t really reflect well on them.
I usually don’t post atheist or any religious stuff on my facebook since I have a good mix of atheist and religious friends and I don’t like the ensuing firestorm. Hmm… should I post this inflammatory article or the cute dog eating cabbage?
Yes, I’m a coward ;)
I was watching David Attenborough doing his latest series on TV, and along with thinking how blessed we are to still have him, I thought of what a bad job of PR Richard Dawkins is doing. Probably once he could have followed on from Attenborough. But not anymore. And then there’s the atheist movement. Rebecca, Thunderfoot, and PJ or whatever – are acting like kids. If they can’t figure it out, then they should get a PR manager. @William: Kudos for posting dog eating cabbage :)