Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement?

[rug]

The continuing debate over a murky sexual encounter at a 2008 convention for cheekily anti-establishment skeptics underscores a broader dilemma: How can a progressive, important intellectual community behave so poorly towards its female peers?

Mark Oppenheimer
BuzzFeed Contributor
Posted on Sept. 11, 2014, at 10:38 p.m.

On June 19, 2008, Alison Smith, 26 and aflame with commitment to her cause, was at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, working for the James Randi Educational Foundation as part of the staff for The Amaz!ng Meeting. “TAM,” as everyone calls it, was started by the foundation in 2003 and is a four-day annual convention of what’s loosely called the freethought movement, comprising atheists, agnostics, debunkers of pseudoscience, and others promoting rationalism over superstition, and reason over religion. What Comic-Con is to X-Men fans, TAM has become to freethought: an intellectual mixer, a party zone, and the place where the average fan can meet his or her heroes.



Shermer at the TAM6 gathering in 2008.
Napolean_70 / Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0) / Via Flickr: buymelunch

The featured speaker in 2008 was astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, now the host of Cosmos, the update of Carl Sagan’s classic miniseries. Christopher Hitchens spoke that year, and the illusionists Penn and Teller, heroes to the freethought movement, performed. Yet one of the biggest draws was Michael Shermer, a swaggering historian of science who, after an earlier career as an ultra-long-distance bicyclist, founded Skeptic magazine. He now contributes columns to Scientific American, speaks all over the world, and writes popular books like Why People Believe Weird Things, which are just what you should give to a friend who needs to be deprogrammed from a belief in fundamentalist Christianity, alien abduction, or bogus homeopathic remedies. He is a freethought celebrity, an exciting person for a young activist like Alison Smith to bump up against — which she did, at an after-party on the first night.

“I ran into Shermer in the hallway,” Smith said recently, speaking publicly for the first time about what happened that night. They began talking, and he invited her to a Scotch and cigar party at the Caesars Palace hotel. “He was talking about future articles we could write, and he mentioned this party and asked if I could come, and I said yes.” At the party, they began downing drinks. “At some point,” Smith said, “I realized he wasn’t drinking them; he was hiding them underneath the table and pretending to drink them. I was drunk. After that, it all gets kind of blurry. I started to walk back to my hotel room, and he followed me and caught up with me.”

On their way from Caesars to the Flamingo, where they were both staying, she chatted briefly with a friend on her mobile phone, she told me. They got to the Flamingo. “He offered to walk me back to my room, but walked me to his instead. I don’t have a clear memory of what happened after that. I know we had sex.” She remembers calling a friend from an elevator after leaving his room. “I was in the elevator, but didn’t know what hotel.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/markoppenheimer/will-misogyny-bring-down-the-atheist-movement#3cvirht

[tonedevil]

1. Maybe it's just me...

I am a lifelong atheist and I don't understand what an atheist movement even is. Am I supposed to join a church because someone who seems to have come to the same conclusion as I regarding the existence, or lack of existence, of a "God" is a sexual predator? Are you expecting people to jump on the faith wagon because of this? Many people who don't believe in "God" are dirtbags as are many who do believe so what?

[rug]

2. Welcome to DU.

Interesting questions, especially when flipped.

[tonedevil]

6. I don't mean to be obtuse,

but I don't see what the questions look like when they are flipped. Would you like to expound?

[cleanhippie]

10. Probably not. The answers to those questions make believers very uncomfortable.

[rug]

16. You seem quite comfortable with those questions.

When you get an answer you don't like you become uncomfortable, if not hostile.

[cleanhippie]

24. and you don't.

[rug]

25. Of course not.

But then I'm not asking them to promote something else.

[rug]

15. Sure. Since you haven't been here very long you missed all the threads questioning

why do Catholics stay in a Church whose priests rape children. There are variations to that question but that's the gist of it.

That tactic is used whenever some bozo who's a cleric does something awful.

Your post provided one answer to that question, flipped.

. Am I supposed to leave a church because someone who seems to have come to the same conclusion as I regarding the existence of a God is a sexual predator? Are you expecting people to jump off the faith wagon because of this? Many people who believe in God are dirtbags as are many who do not believe so what?

ETA: See Post 11. QED.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Shermer could get hit with a bus and it would do nothing to 'the atheist movement.'

We don't have a pope.

[Feral Child]

4. I didn't know we have a "movement".

I just think the concept of a "god" or "gods" is foolish.

This guy sounds like a date-rapist. I don't see what that has to do with my lack of belief in a deity or deities.

[longship]

5. I agree with many of the posts in this thread.

But I also think that the skeptical movement has a real issue with misongynist behavior. The recent firing of DJ Grothe -- a person who I cannot stomach -- as president of the JREF may have been the result of his denial of the fact that are some real asshole guys in the skeptical movement. Women don't feel safe at these conferences which is likely why TAM attendance has slipped. And as long as the JREF ignores it, and continues to refuse to acknowledge it -- fuck you, DJ -- the problem will not go away.

For shame.

[Promethean]

7. Oh yawn this one again.

The atheists community is no more or less misogynist than the rest of the world. The problem occurs when standards are set. We hold ourselves to a higher standard and the non-atheists hold us to an impossible standard. So the theists point out something that happens within their communities all the time without comment. We agree it is reprehensible and should be fixed. Then the religious scream from the rooftops how we even admit we are bad. Kind of like this thread.

[okasha]

8. "Don't rape women" isnt an impossible standard.

[cleanhippie]

11. "Don't rape children" is too.

Doesn't seem to be a problem for the RCC though.

[Promethean]

12. Oh yes but thanks for taking the worst possible context of what I said.

It shows your intellectual dishonesty.

[okasha]

13. Oh yawn this one again"

is an open invitation to take your post in the worst possible context. Don't blame me for your display of male privilege--that's all your own.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. Then he should be prosecuted.

Allegations are one thing, and I do see a lot of people taking Shermer to task over it if I search for Michael Shermer Rape Charges.

He should have his day in court on this, I think.

[okasha]

17. Of course he should be.

And he should serve prison time if convicted.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. Indeed.

I don't see any reports of charges filed though...

[okasha]

20. Did you read the article at the link?

Do you think that a District Attorney could have gotten an indictment under the circumstances described, six years ago? I very much doubt it.

[AtheistCrusader]

35. I do.

I certainly think it worth a shot. It's always worth trying if one is actually a victim of any sort of crime, in my opinion.
The system can't work if it is not used, whatever our level of confidence in it.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. I think part of it is the idea of membership.

I'm an atheist. I'm not a member of the 'atheist community'. I don't go to conventions, shows, talks, etc. It's not 'on me' to fix that issue. It doesn't represent me, and I'm not a follower of said alleged sexist assholes/rapists.

And moreover, it's not my place to say anything more about it than I would any other org that I am not a member of. Being an atheist doesn't make you a member of the Atheist Community, however defined, like being a Catholic makes you a member of the Catholic Church. There is no controlling org behind the idea of atheism, as there is with the example of catholocism. Or even Episcopalian, of whom the parent church org has sued 'rogue' churches using the Episcopalian name as a trademark issue.

[beam me up scottie]

19. Should I care what a man who uses his column to complain about such important topics as

Last edited Fri Sep 12, 2014, 08:48 PM - Edit history (2)

why people called Maya Angelou ‘Dr.' Maya Angelou has to say?

Someone who uses their weekly column on religious beliefs to throw around terms like "atheist crusader-authors"?

No?

How about the opinion of someone whose church of choice literally wrote the book on misogyny and defends the catholic church whenever it's criticized on DU?

The church whose Grand Poobah refuses to acknowledge the fact that it continues to oppress women and contributes to the suffering and deaths of poor women and children around the world every day.

Should people who worship in glass cathedrals spend their time throwing stones at others?

Oh yes I know, poor Pope Frankie, anyone who criticizes him or the Church is being unreasonable and bigoted.

It's all part of the "tactic" that is used whenever some bozo who's a cleric does something awful.

It couldn't possibly be because we are raging against our biggest oppressor.

Or the fact that your bozo is much more than a cleric and could use his vast power of influence and rich coffers to help women but won't.



Thanks for your concern about the plight of women atheists, rug, but no thanks.

I'm not buying what you're selling.

[rug]

21. Sorry, tl/dr.

Try to tighten it up next time.

[beam me up scottie]

22. You don't have to look in the mirror, rug.

Just know that we're always going to be here to hold it up for you.

Because we love you.

[rug]

23. That's odd. When I do look in the mirror I only see one person.

You should see someone about that.

That would be far more productive than you trying to lift that mirror, let alone glance in it.

[Curmudgeoness]

28. I'll keep it tight here.

You rock.

[beam me up scottie]

29. He just brings out the best in everybody, you know?

What a lovable old scamp.

[rug]

31. I always knew we were opposites.

[salib]

27. And also, stop beating your wife

[djean111]

30. Atheist "movement"? Like anything an atheist (or theist) does would affect my non-belief in a deity

or deities? How silly. Doesn't make any sense. None.

[immoderate]

32. No.

The atheism is coincidental. They are Libertarians. They take liberties.

--imm

[rug]

33. NTS

Although the reason this happened is because he's a pig.

[Laffy Kat]

34. It's all the Libertarians.

They can be a misogynist bunch.

[LiberalAndProud]

36. Why do you suppose Mark is revisiting this 2008 incident?

You would think in the intervening six years, there would be heaps of other scandalous misogyny inside the 'movement' to discuss. Maybe we should recruit Ms. Palin, just to keep things interesting for Mr. Oppenheimer.

As for the question posed in the title, the answer is no.

[rug]

38. It's been simmering and burst into flames again last year.

Then, five years later, on Aug. 8, 2013, a popular freethought blogger named PZ Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, wrote a post titled “What do you do when someone pulls the pin and hands you a grenade?” Myers had, he claimed, been “given this rather … explosive … information … And it’s bad. Really bad … I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do, I can do no other.” Then, without naming Smith, he quoted an email from her:

At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me […] I wanted to share this story in case it helps anyone else ward off a similar situation from happening […] Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things (5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them) and wanted to just say something and warn people, and I didn’t know how.

The story attracted wide attention, and many bloggers and commenters attacked Myers for posting, five years after the fact, an anonymously sourced attack on a man who says he has never been arrested for, let alone convicted of, anything. One atheist started an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for Shermer to sue Myers (which he never did). And Shermer, when I contacted him, denied Smith’s version of events

.

[LiberalAndProud]

42. PZ Meyers talked about the incident again, five years later. So yes, it will destroy the 'movement'.

/sarcasm

Oh, hell. Excommunicate all three of them.... Wait. What?

[cbayer]

37. While very long, I think this is a really good and comprehensive analysis

of a problem that gets brought up repeatedly and far too often dismissed.

It is imperative that those within the leadership of things like TAM take this very seriously. Those that continue to trivialize or deny it, should be sidelined.

[Brettongarcia]

39. Shermer's unthinkable sin: he went to his room with a drunk woman, and had sex.

By all means, this is much, much more horrible than the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and the recent religious genocides in Rwanda, Serbia, and possibly Iraq.

And this is much, much worse than the recent story about the priest who had sex with 5 children and a dog.

And the documentation of course is impeccable: "The story attracted wide attention, and many bloggers and commenters attacked Myers for posting, five years after the fact, an anonymously sourced attack on a man who says he has never been arrested for, let alone convicted of, anything."

Thank you for bringing this sterling piece of journalism to our attention! No one would ever accuse anyone here, of gross irresponsibility.

I guess she claims she was too drunk to consent; though she does not say that she did not, in some drunken way, consent. But that's irrelevant

This is terrible beyond belief. It's too bad we don't have capital punishment, for stories like this.

[beam me up scottie]

41. Sorry, tl/dr.

Seriously, though, while very long, I think this is a really good and comprehensive analysis
of a problem that gets brought up repeatedly and far too often dismissed.

I agree with cbayer, rug's problem should be taken seriously.

How can we help if people continue to trivialize or deny it?

I personally think that all involved should be sidelined.

[MineralMan]

40. There's a movement?

None of the atheists I know are part of any movement, and the number of atheists I know is considerable. We all simply do not believe that anything like supernatural entities exist. No movement required for that.

[rug]

43. Granted, it's more like standing around than a movement, yet there it is.