The One-Percent Difference

[rug]

February 3, 2016
by Adam Lee

I posted the other day on Facebook about Richard Dawkins being disinvited from NECSS for promoting a grossly sexist video, which provoked an onlooker to comment that he agreed with Dawkins and not with me. (It was a white man, if you wanted to know.)

- snip -

I generally agree with 99% of what you say, but apparently you’re one of those guys who demands a 100% agreement rate.

- snip -

My response is that if you think something like this is a minor difference of opinion – that we can differ on this point, and yet our beliefs can still be 99% similar – then you haven’t understood me at all.

As it happens, I think this dismissive, minimizing attitude is exactly the problem. When it comes to sexism in the atheist community, the biggest problem isn’t the relatively small (but noisy and persistent) mob of screeching trolls and harassers. The biggest problem is the much larger bloc of people who don’t engage in such behavior themselves, but are willing to tolerate it, and who think that whether a person is sexist should form at most a very small part of your opinion of them. It’s the people who believe that if a celebrity author or scientist is effective at promoting atheism, that’s all we ought to care about, not anything else they say or do. (You may notice the analogy with the way that moderate religion can protect and enable dangerous fundamentalism.)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2016/02/the-one-percent-difference/

[Fumesucker]

1. I think continuing to get on the sexist bandwagon after Gloria Steinem's little faux pas is silly

Even a noted icon of the feminist movement can inadvertently say something jaw droppingly sexist in brain fart moment.

We all have flaws and we all have a purpose even if it's only as a bad example.

[rug]

2. He's done it too many times to be caused by brain farts.

[Fumesucker]

3. I don't think he has said anything quite as Neanderthal as Steinem...

[rug]

5. Did you read this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027591873

[Fumesucker]

7. I'm in a .. flippant mood tonight

[rug]

8. That's cute. And I didn't know it was possible.

[Fumesucker]

9. It's easier than parallel parking

[Major Nikon]

4. So how many times does the Pope have to associate homosexuals with the devil

...before we can call him a bigot?

[rug]

6. Can't answer that until I can see the end of this non sequitur.

[Major Nikon]

10. Sure, because that's different