Things I learned on Reddit today.
1) From a_weed_wizard in the Men’s Rights subreddit, I learned that feminists cannot be atheists:
GirlWritesWhat agrees:
I’m not sure where those downvotes came from, since everything GirlWritesWhat says is by definition true.
2) From AskHistorians, I learned that feminists trying to correctly translate ancient Greek are evil man-hating monsters. Check out the downvotes on EggyMc!
Obviously, she’s retranslating with malice aforethought!
In this case, it’s easy to tell where at least some of the downvotes are coming from: A link on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
MRAs: protecting ancient Greek history from MISANDRY since 2012!
Apparently feminism is a religion because it means you believe, uh, women exist?
Huh. I guess I’m a fanatical believer.
Also, of course, anything pro-woman (and for that matter factually accurate) is “sexism against men.” Sigh. It’s not even shocking any more.
Everything makes men look bad! Except MRAs!
I’m an atheist and I’m a feminist. Therefore… I don’t exist. MIND BLOWN!
Well, changing the translation of that bit of the Iliad does make men (er, male gods) look worse. It doesn’t make them look bad.
It changes them from “stone cold badasses who had total charge of their women and no emotional vulnerability” to “characters with some emotional vulnerability, who were not immune to manipulation.” Which ought not to be humiliating–in the real world, these are very common, human things, and not signs of weakness. If you care about other people, you’re not immune to manipulation.
But because it makes the male gods less perfect, in MRA eyes that’s the same as making a laughingstock out of those dumb gullible men.
A feminist article of faith is that “people are fucking different” so there aren’t any statistical tendencies of men to be one way and women to be another, or if there are sex differences, they are caused by ignorant sexists constructing them by saying that they exist, and they will disappear after the revolution.
I don’t need to take “people are fucking different” on faith. I’ve met people before. They’re not all the same.
scrapemind, your argument is just that xkcd comic all over again.
“so there aren’t any statistical tendencies of men to be one way and women to be another”
You got it.
and they will disappear after the revolution
LMAO
So gender equality is religious dogma? Nope. I’m a feminist with no religion.
There are statistical differences between men and women! However:
1. That does not prove these differences are innate. Society can create statistical differences in many areas. Of course girls raised with family, school, media, and/or peers telling them “girls are bad at math” won’t be as good at math! That doesn’t prove that girls are naturally bad at math.
2. The size of the statistical differences tends to be massively overstated and misunderstood. If boys are 3% better at a certain math test (fake number for example purposes), there’s still a giant overlap–there’s still lots of girls who are better at math than lots of boys. It’s not like every boy is 3% better than every girl.
3. You have to cite the specific statistics relevant to the difference you’re claiming. Saying “it’s been proven that there are some differences, therefore women are all programmed to want money and men are all programmed to want hot teenagers” doesn’t wash. If you can prove one stereotype has a grain of truth, that doesn’t prove that all stereotypes are true.
Meanwhile, back in the reality-based universe, atheism and feminism are natural allies considering the vast majority of sexism and misogyny these days either has its roots in or is directly propagated by theological nonsense. I don’t understand why anyone would want to distance themselves from people who are willing to fight for the same goals, although I guess I can understand why those who just want to consider themselves smarter than everyone else would make up any reason they could think of to keep others out of their smart people club.
“…or if there are sex differences, they are caused by ignorant sexists constructing them by saying that they exist, and they will disappear after the revolution.”
You might want to look into this thing called “socialization”, unless we’re back to blank slate theory, which I would’ve sworn died out about a century ago now.
I dunno, I think armchair evopsych is starting to give it a run for its money 😉
I know a whole bunch of women who just stopped existing, yo.
@GWW:
What you don’t know about atheism and feminism would fill a warehouse or 3. I mean, even on the jackass meter, this ranks. As lame as this gambit is, the correct way to apply it is to say that you can’t be a feminist and a skeptic. Feminism isn’t a god, and thus can not directly conflict with atheism; there are atheists who think Bigfoot and aliens are real,a fter all. Neither is a good, so they remain atheists
If you define religion as having faith, and define having faith as believing that something is true, then no one is an atheist. Which is obviously bullshit.
I’ve never seen non-armchair evopsych. Also, considering the attacks on abortion rights and bodily autonomy for women, no, not in practical terms.
Societies have been pretty uniformly religious from the beginning of recorded history. The same is true of sexism. It doesn’t actually follow that the two are related, though: Reddit and the People’s Republic both have a high level of both atheism and sexism.
If religious people are being sexist, the problem isn’t the theism, it’s the sexism.
Criminy! The words matter. That word, atheist, does not mean what they think it means.
Another Inego Montoya moment brought to us all by the abuser lobby.
Well, I’ve seen all the complaints that ‘proper’ evopsych is being misrepresented by the just-so-story variety. I can’t say I’ve looked into it enough to be able to comment and I’m not particularly inclined to.
However I think it’s pretty telling that the proponents of the ‘serious’ evopsych focus their ire on the victims of the misogyny and racism of the armchair variety, instead of the people who are misrepresenting their supposedly valid discipline. I don’t get that.
Eh, maybe my UK bias is showing here; we’re pretty secular (for all our problems) and don’t have a religious right with the power and influence they do in the US (if that’s where you are, I don’t know)
Also, most atheists have articles of faith. Just because those articles of faith aren’t “I believe in the truth and/or relevance and/or holiness of this religious text or tradition” doesn’t mean they’re not articles of faith.
You don’t become some Vulcan-type Purely Rational Being if you don’t believe in any god, and being a Vulcan-type Purely Rational Being wouldn’t make you a better person even if it were possible.
They are lying. The reason there is no non-armchair Evopsych is because they never put their money where their mouth is; they don’t run fitness trials. That’s what developmental biologists do. The two disciplines are very similar on the surface, except developmental biology then tests its claims on what is evolutionarily adaptive.
I’m aware that sexism and religion have existed in various semblances since the beginning of humanity. I’m aware that some religions are less sexist than others. I’m saying that today, in the modern world, sexist practices and institutions are the direct result of (today’s, modern) religious justifications. Sexist atheists are sexist because they pick up on the sexism of the rest of the culture without thinking about where those modes of thinking came from, either because they don’t think they’re susceptible to subconscious bigotry or they don’t want to let go of the advantages sexism gives them. But the most damaging forms of misogyny – the legal subjugation of women & their bodies, the cultural acceptance of owning women/children – that’s (currently, today) coming from religion.
@ Rutee–I think you probably mean evolutionary biology or evolutionary developmental biology. Developmental bio is all about how an organism turns from one cell into many specialized cells, and so it isn’t about evolution per se (though it does have evolutionary implications–that’s what evolutionary developmental biology is). But yes, you are correct–evolutionary biology do test that a modification is and adaptation, i.e. that is beneficial to the organism and has been selected for (and is not just a random effect or a legacy of the past). And that is really, really hard to do, especially for anything concerning human cognition/social structure because culture gets in the way.
(For example, one cognitive quirk in humans–and IIRC other species–is that if you get sick hours after eating something you won’t want to eat that food any more, which is a violation of how conditioning usually works. It is probably adaptive, for obvious reasons, but that would be very hard to find good evidence for. Culturally-based responses are even harder.)