A fair bit of the back-and-forth re. Atheist takes on this stuff needs unpicking here, hence all the quotes, and I’ll try and make this as clear as I can, as there is a lot of intertwined history and conflicting agendas in play here.
That's an interesting view on this material. What do you think of Rachel Oates criticisms of Justin in her video? Is she right? Or, is she overreacting? I ask because I notice you've identified yourself as an atheist and Rachel is an atheist, not a Christian. So, I'm wondering what atheistic men think about these issues, too.
There isn’t going to be common atheist thought on much, given that the only commonality is the lack of belief in deities.
What is more meaningful here, at least as regards Rachel’s tendency to sneer at nice guys in a fashion that is filled with feminist cliche, is the feminist/nonfeminist divide. (I don’t know if she actually does consider herself a feminist, but the sneering at nice guys is textbook feminist behaviour, so even though she may not be one, her thinking has clearly been influenced by them on this particular topic we are discussing).
I’d like to point out at this point that I used the term “feminist/nonfeminist divide” for a reason, mainly because of comments like the following that show up regular as clockwork:
There is a big divide between MRA atheists and feminist atheists.
There isn’t really a big “MRA atheist” contigent. It should also be realised that for some people inclined to feminism or to reflexively defend it, “MRA” is a term thrown at anyone who challenges feminism. It stands for Men’s Rights Activist - basically think loudmouth radicals but focused on men’s issues rather than women’s issues, race issues etc. There is nothing especially wrong with this, structural issues against men exist, and MRAs do the same as what every other radical equality group does, but the mere existence of them causes women’s issues types to lose their goshdarn minds. They are a minority viewpoint but they have been deemed wrong by the more influential movement of feminism to the point where MRAs have been regularly denied platforms in the press, in universities, due to no-platforming campaigns driven by- yet again - feminists. To call someone an MRA when they are not is usually little more than an attempt to bypass the argument and dismiss them without actually addressing what it is they have to say. (It’s a bit of an odd approach, seeing as feminism is still a minority viewpoint - most people in the US and UK believe in equality but most don’t want to to ID as feminist. This would indicate there is some difference between what people consider equality to be and what feminism is actually doing - so maybe this might be cause for feminists to self-reflect, but there I go again on my dreamy little tangents.)
To go back to what I was saying before, there isn’t commonality between atheists other than the lack of belief in deities. A more productive discussion may revolve around the “sceptic” community. Atheist scepticism has a set of common standards beyond lack of belief in deities - the idea is rationalism, empiricism, openness to debate, evidence-based policy, that sort of thing.
There is, however, a substantial divide between non-feminist atheist sceptics and feminist atheist sceptics (I’m in the former camp). The closest there was to an atheist movement was the sceptic movement, which did involve the four horsemen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, etc.
There was a fairly acrimonious split around 2011, nicknamed “Elevatorgate” - a good summary is on FreethoughtKampala. Again, swears - PM me if you want links. In essence, the problem boiled down to the fact that disagreement with the feminist sceptics was met with spurious accusations of hating women, and dissent from feminist views was banned from their websites - even though we all regularly denounced creationists who often resorted to banning unwelcome views from their websites, and who conflated criticism of their beliefs with personal attack. This furore did eventually drag in Richard Dawkins, and I think some of the feminist sceptics sensed a chance to try and unseat one of the horsemen and to make a name for themselves.
The problem, ultimately, is that feminism very often isn’t compatible with
scepticism- it’s an ideology of its own as opposed to trying to approach things in a detached, neutral way. It is also pretty darn censorious, which is a red rag to a bull given that at the time, atheism was very concerned about freedom to dissent from dogmatic views, such as prescriptive religious ones.
In the atheist world, the schism ended up favouring the nonfeminist sceptics, but one can argue it hardly matters seeing as there are now censorious feminists (unwilling to criticise their own beliefs but very willing to impose them on others) bloody everywhere, like a disease. They won the battle, but are losing the war. I abandoned feminism personally after this, mainly after I saw the feminist sceptics defending a meme called “Schrodinger’s Rapist”, which basically is sexist profiling of men - treat all men as potential rapists just in case. Which, as I have said many times already, would be considered unacceptable if you stereotyped women in that way. This feminist behaviour was the first time I’d seen anything like this, but I initially felt it was a one-off and if not then very limited in scope. Then I saw the same thing happening in American Sci-fi writing, video gaming - then it suddenly burst out into the wider culture war in universities and politics. And I still maintain that feminism is a wholly inadequate viewpoint in many respects. This isn’t to say I’m against gender equality, simply that feminism is so riven with inequality that it doesn’t deserve to be considered as the vanguard of trying to achieve gender equality.
(This is, incidentally, the way I feel about religions - it’s not that they don’t address some genuine needs and issues, and not everything that have done is wrong - but they vastly overstate the significance, accuracy and applicability of their own ideas, and in doing so fall so far short they are inherently inadequate and unfit for purpose. In suggesting an alternative I am not saying we do away with the good ideals those belief systems hold but that we
transcend them, that we can so easily do so much better than them.)
If you want to go through the main forums where the atheist-sceptic schism occurred, they would be Pharyngula (PZ Myers’ blog) and the slymepit (spinoff board started by Abby Smith to criticise Myers and co after they banned critics of feminism). Proceed at your own risk and abandon hope all ye who enter there
And they accuse us Christians of having tons of different arguing factions...
(Just to puncture this little jibe, the reason Christians get criticised for having tons of different arguing factions is because you claim to have access to an omniscient deity. Given that, there is no reason you should have disunity. I fully expect Christianity as a group to have the same splits as any other body of people because it’s composed of human beings, but that’s the point - human beings, human beings only, and no gods involved.)
Interesting. I guess I'll have to take a look at that divide in their ontological thinking. Thanks for the 'heads up,' Strathos!
...and here I was thinking they were all cozying up together at their new atheist churches, holding hands, and all repeating, "Praise be to the awesome Richard Dawkins!"
...I guess not. No kissy-kissy, nice-nice there, after all.
Most atheists won’t be involved in the drama I mentioned, it was relatively contained, and applies mainly to the sceptic movement which was the closest thing atheism has to a movement, but does involve some add-ons.
Currently Dawkins tends to get no-platformed now and again by other atheists/secularists for “Islamophobia” which given his comments about Christianity is absolutely preposterous - the guy is nothing if not consistent on that one.
That's similar to what happened in Europe. Once you reject religion, it doesn't automatically create political harmony, even though the Enlightenment rhetoric often portrayed religious belief as divisive. No, the problem is deeper than that.
To a point, but I would argue a big part of the reason why feminism gets many atheists’ backs up (as it certainly does mine) is because it riffs so strongly off dynamics many of them will have experienced in the church and hated it.
Male privilege is like original sin.
If you criticise the belief system, or put a foot wrong, you’re a sinner/misogynist - and definitely don’t expect an honest debate about the flaws in the belief system!
If you sin, you must publicly proclaim your guilt and repent.
The patriarchy is everywhere, and is responsible for all things. Should this yield contradiction or inadequate explanation, the patriarchy is so insidious / the patriarchy works in mysterious ways.
To summarise in a meme, here is why many atheists don’t like feminism:
No-one is putting me through that again. I did not spend years deprogramming myself from Christianity only to fall for the same nonsense again in secular garb.
The problem was there were people calling themselves sceptics that still wanted to behave in exactly the same
religious behaviours and thinking we were trying to rid ourselves of. The consequences and outworkings of these ideas were the same too - inescapable guilt, sex-negativity, controlling micromanagement of normal human feelings and behaviour.
I would recommend a piece on this called “Excommunicate Me From The Church of Social Justice” on autostraddle by Frances Lee.
...man, I must spend too much time on CF, because I'm not up on what women are "really saying."
But, I did find the video by Rachel Oates that I put in the OP interesting.
I’d take a look at the slatestarcodex piece as it has some examples of the sort of viciousness women will get away with when talking about men - doesn’t mean they don’t get pushback, but if I wrote some of the things I’ve seen written about men about women instead and under my own name, I’d be sacked.
