Policing Their Own

[rug]

May 08 2013
by Greta Christina

We want religious believers to police their own.

We want religious believers to stop being silent about atrocities committed in the name of religion. We want them to stop rationalizing, stop trivializing, stop making excuses: for the families who kick their gay kids out of their homes; for the theocrats who force their religion on others with law or violence or both; for the abusive husbands who justify their abuse with God; for the priests who rape children and the church that covers it up. We want religious believers to stop treating tribal loyalty as the single highest moral value they can imagine. We want them to speak out about these things. We want them to police their own.

And when they don’t, we call them hypocrites.

So why is it that when atheists speak out against screwed-up shit that other atheists are doing, it gets called “divisive”?

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/05/08/policing-their-own/

[hrmjustin]

1. Wow can she curse!

[rug]

4. Who can blame her.

Did you check out her links?

I do not want to be in unity with atheists who tell me to fuck myself with a knife. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who say they hope I get raped, who tell me to choke on a dick and die. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who say that I’m a whore and therefore nobody should take me seriously. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who say that I’m an ugly dyke and therefore nobody should take me seriously. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who post their opponents’ home addresses on the Internet; who hack into their opponents’ private email lists and make content from those emails public. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who alert the Westboro Baptist Church to atheist events, and ask if they plan to attend. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who bombard other people with a constant barrage of hate and threats of rape, violence, and death. I do not want to be in unity with atheists who call me a cunt, who call other women cunts, again and again and again and again and again. And I do not want to be in unity with atheists who consistently rationalize this behavior, who trivialize it, who make excuses for it.

[hrmjustin]

7. I just read her article, nothing else.

[okasha]

2. Obviously she's just a hack

who doesn't even know the difference between atheism and anti-theism and can't offer anything but a straw man easily scattered by superior minds.

Has that about got it?

[hrmjustin]

3. She was just all over the map for me.

[okasha]

12. She has spoken out forcefully and repeatedly

against sexism and misogyny among the New Atheists. In return, she's been threatened with or wished all the foul things listed in Rug's excerpt. There's already one post on this thread trivializing her justifiable outrage as a «rant.»

Under those circumstances, I think she's admirably fluent.

Edited to add: there's now a second post that stops half a nanometer short of calling her a whore.

[hrmjustin]

13. I have never heard of her before, are her blogs worth reading?

[okasha]

16. I enjoy her feminist perspective,

which applies to society as a whole as well as to the atheist community. And she's nothing if not forthright.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. She sounds semi frothy, and trivializing important and actual issues in order to

spew a diatribe only those in her club could understand veers toward the religious. I don't want unity with people who rant incoherently.

[rug]

6. I'm not so sure about that.

Everything she says in post 4 is backed up.

Semifrothy would be a mild reaction to that,

[Bluenorthwest]

8. Seeing a community where there is just people who don't believe something is a tad

on the religious side. I was not challenging the validity of her claims, I could not understand her claims or whom she was making them against. I assume this was intended for an inside audience. When I have a complaint against a person, I level the at that person clearly and directly. I got lots of anger and little information from what I read. So perhaps she is right,I just could not say about what, nor could I suggest she's wrong. I'd have to know what she's talking about first.
She was very clear that she is fine with excuses about abandonment of gay youth by religious people compared to something done to her. I don't care for the rhetorical use of such people for the sake of a personal agenda.
And again, I don't see why she'd expect unity from a group with one common denominator, it is like being shocked that a person who likes the Beatles does not also like your favorite desert. What's the connection?

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. I can't understand your post at all

"Seeing a community where there is just people who don't believe something is a tad on the religious side. "

Is that a criticism of Jamy Ian Swiss? Christina is the one saying that the 'unity' that JIS is calling for isn't worth it, because of the misogynists and homophobes who insult her and other women or gay atheists (she's bisexual, to be precise).

"whom she was making them against"

I thought that was fairly obvious - it's the people who reply to her in comments with extreme insults, or do things like invite Westboro baptist Church to picket the 'Women in Secularism' conference. She gave links. Do you expect her to list the names of each one, yet again? There are 9 links, which you can follow to see who the culprits were. A list of names makes tedious reading.

" She was very clear that she is fine with excuses about abandonment of gay youth by religious people "

No, she wasn't. This is something else that you cannot understand. She said "We want them to stop rationalizing, stop trivializing, stop making excuses: for the families who kick their gay kids out of their homes". At no point did she say "she is fine" with it. She condemned it. She went on to say that similar hatred (eg calling her a 'dyke') needs to be condemned among atheists as well, not ignored amidst calls for 'unity'.

You really do seem to have completely misunderstood her post. You've picked up just about every wrong end of every stick.

[Fumesucker]

9. Atheists are not a tribe, as you may remember I've never met another atheist

And if people are doing what she says they're doing they are assholes and wrong, atheist, theist or whatever.

Atheists share exactly one common characteristic, they lack a belief in a divine being, it's not a club to be "divisive" about in the first place.

[rug]

10. Do you hold the converse, that it's not a club to be united about in the first place?

[Fumesucker]

14. In cultures where atheists aren't a despised minority it's not even an issue

If people who didn't collect stamps were a small minority hated and feared by the majority who did collect stamps then I suspect those non-stamp-collectors might tend to draw together out of a feeling of being in the same not particularly nice situation.

On the other hand if non-stamp-collectors were treated like everyone else they would have no reason I can think of to organize around not collecting stamps.

Not the clear cut answer I imagine you might have been looking for but that's how I see it.

[rug]

15. Fair enough.

[dimbear]

11. DUers may well enjoy her other books. She writes on various unusual topics,

e.g. "Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients."

I have no concept why she is sometimes exposed to words which make the timid blush.

[Phillip McCleod]

17. yeh there's a contingent of atheists who don't want other atheists..

..to write about their *progressive* values in the context of atheism, and they say some really nasty shit instead of making their point using reasoned arguments.

to some degree, however, there's some troll-feeding going on over at FTB imo, as well.. celebrities and politicians get hate mail and scary mail and have to ignore it. don't read the twitter feed of the crazy nutsack stalker. certainly don't respond and give them the attention they crave. that's all they really want. it's what motivates them and to draw ever more attention to their antics only elevates them from gnats to .. dare i say .. trolls.

it's not like the atheist MRA crowd has any points worth considering. greta and others have been trying this approach to drawing attention to the problem, but what's the solution? they've been trying this 'engagement' approach for more than a year, i believe, and it seems to be exacerbating the problem.. possibly buttressing my 'troll-feeding' hypothesis.

add to that the fact that much of FTB is riddled with vacuous posts, and the result is.. i read it less often.

[DreamGypsy]

18. It's good to dance around with a tribe...

...

RUG, you're correct. FumeSucker, you're correct. Greta Cristina, you're correct.

We're all seeking our Tribe.

[rug]

19. Excellent!

Although every time the camera zoomed in on him I saw John Boehner.

He would never sing these lyrics:

All around the side streets, needles look for veins
Where bullets found their mark in old rebellions
Others stand saluting, saying this is who I am
A piece of cloth, a field, an island

[cbayer]

21. Good for Greta.

Just like the religious right needs to be marginalized, so do these abusive, hostile extremists within the atheist community.

They are divisive and hurt the overall cause. Shine a light on them and show them to be the hateful individuals they are. And don't let them claim to speak for the group.

Just like within the religious community, it's up to those that share the same label to actively confront them, or they will cast their shadow on everyone else.

[cleanhippie]

22. First of all, atheism is not a "cause" that is being harmed.

It's just the lack of belief in a god. It's not a cause.

And it sure is ripe for you to castigate others or not doing what you will not do yourself.

[okasha]

23. I believe the applicable observation here

is that liberal and moderate atheists need to disavow the extremists. Until they do, they are only enabling the haters and extremism.

[LiberalAndProud]

24. Done. I'll defrock the next atheist extremist I meet.

Also, the next time an extremist atheist passes me the collection plate, I'll be sure to withhold my money.

Wait. What?

[okasha]

28. Well, the next time some blowhard

declares that child rape is «yucky» and the victims «get over it,» you might respond that the experience frequently causes lifelong trauma up to and including severe PTSD.

That would be a start.

[Lordquinton]

31. I'll be sure to pass that on to the little girl

that her opinion on the events that happened to her are wrong.

[rug]

25. Lol.

[Phillip McCleod]

26. what do you suppose greta, pz, et al are doing?

..leading by example is what..

see, that's how it's done.

[okasha]

29. What do you suppose Sister Megan Rice,

Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, Fr. Mychal Judge, Wanblee Mato, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, the Hopi Elders and many others less well known did/ are doing?

.. leading by example is what..

see, that's how it's done

[Phillip McCleod]

30. really the hopi elders are calling out the fundies in their midst? LOL.

give me a break.

believers tend to defend and deflect criticism from fellow believers, even when their fellow believers are odious fucks. this is such a plain and apparent fact that greta led the above column by calling out atheist assholes she knew about. she would never defend them or deflect criticism of them.

i fail to see how the hopi elders relate.

[cbayer]

27. Lol. Apologists, I guess.