Re: Minorities in atheism/skepticism

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Re: Minorities in atheism/skepticism

Split off to avoid de-railing the other thread. But my hunch has always been that "outreach" or quotas wouldn't even be talked about if said "movements" incorporated more minority issues. It's not difficult to do -- there's all sorts of pseudoscience and other crankery tied into bigotry. Hate always generated rationalizations. Think abortion and breast cancer, reparative therapy, the homosexual agenda, abstinence programs, racialism, eugenics (still not totally dead), the Lost Cause mythos and other neo-Confederate hooey, "neurosexism," etc. Of course, this cuts both ways in that minorities have been allowed to get away with some egregious acts of pseudo-scholarship because they are simply "reclaiming their heritage" or some such nonsense. Think Afrocentrism and melanin theory, the goddess movement, the European witch-hunts as a "woman's holocaust," etc. That's a perfect example of the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)04:25, 26 November 2011

Very much indeed. Though I think the "skepticism movement", if you want to call it that, does do a lot on gay rights and abortion - if anything precisely because they're rich mines for pseudoscience. And RW has possibly the most ridiculously extensive human sexuality section for a website supposedly just devoted to "rational" matters! And lo, we've attracted a reasonable, thought not incredibly exceptional, proportion of women compared to many other groups (without specifically saying "hey girls, come here, we have a quota to fill!!") and certainly above our fair share of sexual deviance too. And it's good that we have a very open policy on what people can bring to the site, and very few, if any, bars on what we discuss. I don't recall anything ever being dismissed as a "minority issue" here. We're not perfect, but I think we as a group do what you're talking about pretty well. Can that alone continue to improve things?

Though perhaps it'll take a lot more than that to shake the angry-white-boy image. That's something that no amount of being open about what psuedoscience you accept as fair game will solve.

Scarlet A.pngtheist04:40, 26 November 2011

RW doesn't really put strict boundaries on what can be included (hence the "PoliticsWiki" side of the site), but it seems like many other organizations want to stay "apolitical". Which is always a bit confusing since one of the staples of pseudoscience, creationism, is at base a political movement. In any case, I find the African-American atheist/humanist movement to be interesting from a historical perspective because the civil rights movement was so intimately intertwined with Christianity. Norm Allen has edited an interesting anthology on this.

Nebuchadnezzar (talk)05:29, 26 November 2011
 

I don't know about our level of racial minority, since color is not something one sees online, i'm skeptical that you have a good "attraction" of women, and have no idea about gay rights. When I came 2 years ago, and again when I arrived in July(?)ish, i found that while you had some articles about abortion, about women's role in politics, about the difference between "anti women & clinton" vs. "anti woman and palin", it was very much a male perspective on those issues. "these are what matter to the main stream male dominated world - even for the rational and liberal". It really kinda bit my craw that our most developed "womem's issues" were still male centric.

I have no idea if the racial or gay issues are straight or white centric in the same way. I'm white and straight -- I don't know how a mexican national would feel about our immigration articles, for example. ADk mentioned on the other thread "why can't men speak for both sides, if that is their job. The answer is actually pretty simple "pidgen english". Those in power do not have to learn other languages, do not have to think about how other people live, and do not have to put themselves in other people's shoes. Those who server the powered, have historically always had to know both sides. They spoke both english AND their native languages if they wanted to be successful; they predict the needs of those they serve, so they have to be "in their shoes"; etc.

Minorities of any type have to know how to fit into both worlds, so they better understand both worlds. The powered "majority" (which are not numerically majority of course" do not.

The very picture you show of the "4 white old dudes" is sort prevalent in academics as a whole (at least in the late 80's and 90s when i was a grad student - i hear it's "changing", but not "changed"). You will succeed far more if you do not list your woman's first name on your books, or unless you write about "women's issues". The most famous historians, linguists, and other scholars of humanities are still men. Women have to fight to have a voice, and when they disagree with the dominant they are dismissed, not because, like say, Krauss - they have a novel but not fully analyzed model, but honest to god, guys, because they "don't get it", are not "well versed enough" or are "caught in women's emotional views".

Women, blacks, gays see the world differently than the White mainstream. Not because of genetics, but because of experiences we have, ways we are raised, and roles we play. So when a woman say "but the mind is not what is making decisions; in fact, the mind and logic more often than not are there to justify something you know intunitivly or from your emotional context" it is dismissed as "women's philosophy" until a MALE writes the same thing.

I don't have the cites on me, but i used to bring into class, articles from so-called "feminist Ethics" and read 10 or 20 year old articles talking about the importance of emotion and intuition - anti Kant type ethics and morality. and showed the Science Citation Index for these works. Who was citing them? But then a mainstream author, Lakoff, started writing about it, and all of a sudden, it was an acceptable (not alternative but as a supplement to Kant).

I sound ranty, but as an academic, it is very strange to me to hear people talk around this issue, trying to understand it, but still approaching it from the "If i talk about it, I get it" sense. That made no sense - sorry. I'm kinda not sure exactly how to explain this. But it feels sorta 'presumptious", is the best word i can think of.

anyhow, just my two cents, and also my motivation around so many of the abortion articles, the Eve artile, etc.

I'm not some anti male feminist, by the way. I just know that there is tons of assumptions out there in the male academic and political world, especially when dealing with "women's" (gay, black, etc?) issues.

Pink mowse.pngGodotSome would use a tautology to describe it ("The way things are done around here is the wa05:51, 26 November 2011

When I say RW is "good" in this respect I mean it's "not bad". To have not 2-3 openly female editors in the top 10 here is pretty impressive in the grand scale of the sausage-fest we call the internet. As Neb points out, we haven't gone the apolitical route to be completely dismissive of it, and collectively I think we try, really hard, not to simply dismiss things as politics. That produces the most volatile section of the wiki, and whether that's a good thing or not your mileage may vary.

I do know what you mean about the academic world. On the Fry-Hitchens discussion the other week it certainly bugged me that it was just a succession of old, balding men - some with a nicely trimmed beard to go with it. Seriously, I couldn't tell which was which. The only reason I could pick Dawkins out of the line up of that show was because he had a full head of hair! But I think that goes beyond mere gender; ethnicity, sexual orientation (well, Fry's gay) and, frankly, age. Contrast the speakers with the three people who got up to ask questions and it was age was the disparity. Where are all the young people with new ideas and fresh perspectives on life because they were raised long after the cold war, or after The Beatles, or in the age of the Internet?

But I suppose the answer to that one is the same as your academics one above; they simply aren't old enough yet! It takes time to get to the top of your profession, so that means that unless you're talking X-Factor style factories that pluck people out of nowhere for arbitrary reasons people to look up to tend to be a bit older. And that means that the experiences that formed them (As you said "Not because of genetics, but because of experiences we have, ways we are raised, and roles we play") were years back. If we're lucky it's just a few years - but in the case of academics it could be decades. So what we looking at are people that emphatically don't have our 2000s zeitgeist attitude to equality, they'll think it but that deep, complex and difficult to shake stuff will be there. It's no comparing like with like to say that old and wizened academics reflect a wider ingrained sexism in people aged 20-30 right now. Sure, they may not be perfect, and the people being born now will probably be even closer to being "right" when they hit 20-30. 58% of undergraduates at my University are female. About 40% of the postgraduates. About 20% of the academic staff, and time is shifting those numbers up the chain, precisely because we need to wait for those women going through University to graduate and get on up there. Now you can probably see why I emphatically think quotas are the wrong idea; it's coming, we just have to have patience.

So I suppose I'm saying that we need to recognise that these people don't necessarily reflect the generation that is coming up (that will surely look bigotted and stupid compared to the one that replaces them) and have the patience for them to be replaced.

(Just for an aside I've just recalled: According to my other half who has been involved in a few operas recently, apparently it's very rare to find professional stage management crews that are predominantly male. We haven't quite figured out why this is the case yet, but it seems odd. Certainly in my amateur-level experience I've probably had more women on crew than men. And you'd think all the humping, dumping and bossing people about would be "traditionally male".)

Scarlet A.pngd hominem12:53, 26 November 2011

Age - you are right on that. Also, with US, and UK and France (not read about other countries, but if those three are models, probably the othrs, too) reporting that women are entering universities in far greater numbers then men, and for the first time, minorities representing some number near to the actual population - in 30 year's time, it will be women and minorities running businesses, sciences, and education - therefor the country, I suspect. We'll have to see.

I wonder what other fields have "oddly" high female participation. I'd never have thought that about opera. I know one lighting guy, and he's never said anything one way or the other, so it never crosses my mind.

Pink mowse.pngGodotSome would use a tautology to describe it ("The way things are done around here is the wa17:02, 26 November 2011