Look at that! Not a nasty word, not an intemperate statement. It’s positively cheerful, with a genuine question at the end, looking for that thing that skeptics love above all, evidence in support of some claim. It got a whole bunch of likes, apparently more than anything else on the thread!

D.J. deleted the comment.

Thank you for your message. Our president happens to be on vacation this week and is out of the office, but I’m SURE he didn’t watch the video past the credits before tweeting that—I didn’t do so myself until someone pointed it out to me. I have never known him to victim-blame or perpetuate rape culture in any way, shape, or form. In fact one of the reasons I wanted to work for American Atheists in the first place (I started here about six months ago) is that American Atheists was the first of all the atheist orgs to enact a harassment policy at their conventions and events following Rebecca Watson’s talk about her experience on the elevator at the conference in Ireland three years ago. Every single one of us on staff identifies as a feminist and although I can’t speak for him directly, I’m certain it wasn’t intentional. Thank you again for telling us about your concerns.

Sincerely,
Dave Muscato

By writing off the entire movement, these donors and volunteers forget how many people – and I suspect it’s a sizable majority – want to see things continually improve. By solely focusing on the negatives, they write off everyone who is actively working to make things better either within the troubled institutions (many of the local groups and volunteers are equally forward-thinking) or in independent organizations.

I guess my point is that we should not be so quick to dismiss the hard work of numerous organizations that are not involved in this mess. We can demand better and ought to work to see the movement we want to see.

Last week, a new portrait of Shermer emerged. And it’s pretty rape-y. The portrait. You’ve seen it, the portrait, by now. Ugly stuff, that portrait.

So I decided to e-mail The Sherm and find out what’s going on!

The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape.

P.S. All claims require evidence, whether they are extraordinary or not. And a claim, in and of itself, is not, by definition, evidence.

If you do a parable and people don’t figure out exactly what the reference is, it’s conceivable that that’s your doing and not theirs. It’s obnoxious to get belligerent about it.

Ah, so donating to this is not, in fact, an attempt to help Shermer get decent representation, but rather a way to condemn unnamed victims who come forward with their stories. Got it.

We’ve “set [our] sights on skepticism and atheism in general” – what does that mean? We want to shoot and kill skepticism and atheism? No we don’t. We “want to do harm to the institutions” – what does that mean? Nothing, really; it’s gibberish. If he means we want secularist and skeptical organizations to do a much better job of dealing with sexism and sexual harassment, and of including women instead of ignoring them, then yes, we do. But guess what – that’s not “doing harm” to them. On the contrary, it’s making them better.

My skepticism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. I will question rape culture. I will demand that my experiences, and the experiences of people of color, of queer folks and disabled folks and poor folks, receive respect and attention within skepticism. Do you really think I’d have left fundamentalism if I hadn’t been the least bit skeptical about its gender roles? Its homophobia? Its ableism? A skepticism that doesn’t address gender, or sexual identity, or racism isn’t capable of addressing all the myriad reasons why people question and abandon religious dogma. A skepticism without these elements isn’t really skepticism and it shouldn’t be labelled as such. It’s just white male supremacy dressed up in different rhetoric. It is the status quo.

It’s amusing (as Stephanie Zvan has already pointed out) to see this guy think this–but disturbing to see him tell people this, and thus misinform the public about us and our movement–when the leading proponents of Atheism+ are people like Greta Christina, who has written fondly of her work as a stripper and porn star and writes and publishes porn herself, and writes extensively in defense of alternative sex culture and sex-positive feminism. Or Alex Gabriel and Miri Mogilevsky, who are openly polyamorous. Or Jen McCreight, who is a public connoisseur of pornography. And on and on. Indeed, many of my friends in the atheist community are polyamorous, or actively participate in the BDSM or swinging communities, some even have orgies and sex parties…at atheist conferences! And you know what? All of them tend to be the most enthusiastic supporters of Atheism+. And of sound sexual harassment policies.

First of all, it’s crucially important to understand that playing innocent is something sexual harassers do to hide their tracks. When caught in the act, they protest that they were “just flirting” and it was “all in good fun” and that they “have no idea what [target] is so upset about.” They pretend to be socially awkward and inept, and that they just “didn’t realize” that their actions would make others feel violated and uncomfortable. They claim that there was a “miscommunication,” although evidence suggests that people are quite good at communicating about boundaries, even if they do so using veiled language.

Accepting prima facie this idea that claims of sexual harassment result from one person being “awkward” and the other person not giving them the benefit of the doubt is harmful, because it allows predators to use awkwardness as an excuse.