Pros, Cons, and Tactics

I've been thinking about this article fairly much all day. The author does a good analysis of all three situations, and I find myself frustrated and annoyed with each of them, though more so with TAM.

The article talks about how sexism has been addressed and handled in three different cons this year. At one con, a female writer was followed and bothered by a long standing volunteer who had a strong presence in the community. She told him repeatedly to stop before finally reporting him. Even though the con had a zero tolerance for sexual harassment, he was only given a slap on the wrist until people began to protest the situation.  Finally he was ban from the con for life.

In the third situation, a proactive approach was taken even before the con started. Women made penalty cards and would hand them out to people who bothered them.  They could just hand the person the card without really having to engage them or speak to them any more than that. This approach seemed to have worked quite well.

The situation discussed in the middle of the article was the most disheartening. It had to do with a con for skeptics. A situation that started out small but ballooned into almost a war within the skeptic community has continued to cause a lot of problems on both sides. In the end, the people who make decisions about the con decided they didn't want to address sexual harassment or feminism because that 'wasn't the focus' of the con itself.

Hmm. From my perspective, that is about as logical as saying, 'we don't want to address the fact that the building is on fire because we're here to talk about atheism.' If there is a problem that could destroy your community, it needs to be addressed.

It seems that this situation in the skeptic community has gotten really ugly. Many of the women who are skeptic feminists have been bullied and threatened by the male members and insulted and belittled in some rather harsh ways. I think it is important to look at what such behavior truly says. After all, one of the most important aspects of communication is to understand not only what your words and actions mean to you, but also how they can be perceived. Perception is, after all, vital to the success of communication.

So here we have a group of presumably intelligent people who are denying in a rather aggressive and abrasive fashion that there isn't a problem with sexism within their group. Their tactic for handling this is to belittle and threaten the women within the group who are making the accusations. What does this say about them?

1. It says that they are deeply defensive people. This makes sense. Atheists and other skeptics are often treated poorly in our society. There are even states where they can't hold office. Like many other groups who have had to fight every step of the way to be heard, they tend to react to any threat in an aggressive manner.

2. They believe they are above something as base as being sexist. People who believe they are enlightened often convince themselves that they are rational and logical and fair at all times. If they say something, it is rational and logical and fair. If someone doesn't see that . . . they are stupid. If they say something that IS off color or politically incorrect, it is because they are making a deep and important point and anyone who is offended is too sensitive or just doesn't get it.

3. They don't believe the rules that apply to others really apply to them. A while back, I blocked a guy on FB because he talked about what a feminist ally he was, but kept posting pictures of nakedish girls who were half his age and making lewd comments about it. I'm not saying someone has to be nonsexual to be a supporter of women, but when someone presents himself as having the same basic attitude about how fun it is to objectify women that one finds with misogynists, then maybe this someone who take a good hard look at what he really believes.

Look, everyone has their sexual hangups. And probably a lot of people have some pretty sexist ideas lurking in their brains. After all, the person who is typing this still has the urge to disappear if she knows a man who is a stranger is going to be near her. I GET that sometimes our feelings about a gender as a whole can override seeing people as individuals, no matter what kind of bits and pieces they have. However, I also know that this is my problem and I can't be defensive if someone expresses how I made them feel about the situation. I should be calm and objective and explain my side of it, then let it go.

In the end, I think a good measure of any behavior comes down to this, before you do something, ask yourself, "So . . . if someone did this to me and I didn't like this person or know this person, how would I feel?" I always try to keep this in mind when I interact in public spaces. At the end of the day, I don't think most of us want to think we're just assholes.