#37 Diversity is objectively valuable.

Here are some reasons people give for not caring about increasing the number of women in skepticism:

Women are free to participate if they want. Nobody’s stopping them.
Men are just more interested in science.
I care about ideas–not demographics!

It is nothing new at all to say that the community of people actively participating in skepticism is composed by and large by middle-class white men. It’s more or less a homogeneous group, and it behaves like one, engaging in activities that the members of the majority like because they’ve never had to do it any other way. And that’s fine, I suppose, depending on your goals. If the goal of the skeptical community is to be a social club of people of like minds in a comfortable, non-challenging environment that is fun to be in and provides a social network of people who can hang out in small groups at the local level to talk and have some more fun, great! Clubs benefit their members in a lot of ways, as anyone who has ever joined one can tell you.

Even better, there are many formal skeptics and atheists groups built on the desire to improve the world we share, and that work very sincerely towards that goal by solving problems identified by and via the methods identified by this homogeneous group of people, who are used to thinking about themselves and what causes problems for them, and also sometimes the problems they perceive other people experience with strategies they suppose will work for those other people they don’t really interact with. Because, you know, homogeneity. Which has a very limited scope, in the end, and is likely to only solve problems for people just like you, and you’ll eventually run out of those people to reach and chances are good that no one from among the group of everyone else haven’t even heard about you and probably don’t care about your problems. They care about their own problems, but you don’t know what they are because you have no representatives from them in your group and get fussy when asked why not. Which may not matter if you’re just into skepticism or atheism for the fun clubhouse times but may matter if you are having trouble growing your influence or solving widespread problems on a large scale.

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#32 Political correctness is just diplomacy by another name.

People fling around the phrase “politically correct” like it’s some kind of insult. Usually it’s wrapped up with some complaint about language, often within conversations that begin with being called out for using some offensive term (that never used to be accepted by the majority as offensive), and the denial that it’s a problem for using the offensive term. Please stop using the word “pussy” to describe someone being a wimp, a woman might say, only to hear from the offending party that it’s just a word and political correctness has gone too far. Media personages boast sometimes about how brave they are for standing up to the political correctness movement and take pride in how politically incorrect they can be. Bill Maher even hosted a show called Politically Incorrect for the better part of a decade. The film PCU has the tagline “Flunk ‘em if they can’t take a joke,” and includes a scene of people throwing meat at vegans for fun. Opponents of “political correctness” are characterized as bold, independent people who don’t let “language police” or “censorship” stop them from telling it like it is. They lament how touchy everyone has gotten about words, and how arbitrary (and therefore irrational) it is that some words should cause offense and not others, and generally how unreasonable it is that they should have to curtail their speech, and that if people are so sensitive and fragile they should just grow a thicker skin and/or shut up. They are the staunch defenders of a more heroic time when people were stronger and not afraid of hurting feelings and facing truths and didn’t let a few harsh words stand in the way of progress. If it weren’t for the politically incorrect, life would be stifling and not that much fun.

The thing is, when you are politically incorrect, you piss people off–people you need on your side now. It used to be OK to piss certain people off because they were just women and minorities and other marginalized groups and who cared about them anyway, but those groups speak up for themselves now and have let everyone know that they don’t like to be called “honey” or “boy” or “cripple.” They have political and economic power and the nerve to insist they also have a say in how society operates. Consider the drama of the University of North Dakota’s mascot, the “Fighting Sioux.” The actual Sioux people (and plenty of other Indians, that is, Native Americans) objected to the appropriation without permission of the Sioux name to represent a collegiate sports team, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled that UND would have to ditch the mascot or face NCAA sanctions. You know why? Because the people who objected to the use of the Fighting Sioux mascot had enough clout to make real trouble for the NCAA, and the NCAA deemed it more important to give the Sioux what they wanted than to keep the name. It’s just a name, after all, right? Shouldn’t affect the school or the teams in the slightest to change mascots, should it? And by changing the mascot to a figure that had not been appropriated without permission, the NCAA spared itself protests, and boycotts, and lawsuits, and other politically (and financially) undesirable outcomes for the entire collegiate sports community. (And hopefully also because they agreed it was the right thing to do.)

It was a political decision. The NCAA did not want to be distracted by controversy from its goal of running collegiate sports programs. Was it the correct decision? Yes. The school, by acceding to the NCAA’s demand to change mascots, avoided sanctions and kept its NCAA privileges. The NCAA, by siding with the Sioux, avoided a public relations nightmare. Sports are played as before, tournaments are still held on campus, and everyone’s happy. (Well, almost everyone. It turned into a fracas at the state level in North Dakota but that story becomes a tangent I’ll leave to you to read up on.) Were the Sioux being “too sensitive”? Wasn’t it really sort of a compliment to have the state college use their identity as a mascot? It doesn’t matter. They didn’t want it. And because Native Americans have more political power these days than they used to, the politically correct thing was to do what they wanted. It was a smart move.

It’s not difficult math to figure out that if there were as many women in the skeptical movement as there are men that the community would be twice as effective, and many outreach programs are started to bring their numbers up. Outreach often stalls, however, when women speak up about things they don’t like and request change. But rather than addressing the problems in order to turn these potential skeptical movement members into actual skeptic movement members–when world leaders do it, for the record, they call it diplomacy, and not as a pejorative–the problem is reframed as a controversy caused by the women themselves: too sensitive, too touchy, too easily offended by words that are just words or behaviors that are bound so entirely in evolution that it’s unnatural to expect people (men) to refrain from engaging in them. Suggesting that the skeptical culture change to make women feel more comfortable in it is just some politically correct flimflam that’s purely emotional and not logical and not at all useful to getting skeptical work done. Plus, if they really cared about skepticism, they wouldn’t get all agitated over a few small details. Right? Right?

But here’s the thing: If you want more women in skepticism, to help promote skeptical projects to make their skeptical success more likely among the general public, then you have to be politically correct. The incorrect thing to do is piss them off by ignoring their requests to make your community more welcoming to them. Boasting that you don’t kowtow to political correctness keeps the number of skeptics unnecessarily low. If YOU really cared about skepticism, YOU wouldn’t get all agitated over a few small details. So if women ask that you not celebrate their presence because of the skeptical babies they could have for you? Stop doing that. It won’t make you less skeptical; it’s just being diplomatic. Even if you think women are getting worked up over nothing. Even if you think there are bigger problems for them to worry about. Political correctness is a strategy to get more people on your side, not a lifestyle to avoid at all costs. Building bridges, allies, common ground, compromise, prioritizing, diplomacy, all that. You should be happy when people are politically correct; it gets results.

The minute you find yourself ready to accuse some woman critiquing the skeptical movement of being politically correct, ask yourself how badly you need women as allies for your cause. Decide what the politically expedient response would be to her to achieve the goal of a larger skeptical community. And if you are unwilling or unable to be politically correct on her behalf, then the next time skeptics are collectively wondering aloud why the movement has stagnated or is floundering, take responsibility.

That’s just politics. Nobody is immune from them. And any group that wants to call itself a movement has to know how to do them correctly.

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#31 Accept–and use–gender-neutral terms.

About two years ago now, my brother decided to apply for a job at a sailmaking company. He wanted to indicate his sewing experience on his resume, and he asked me for help with what word to use to define himself in that way. He did not want to put himself forward as a tailor, because the things he sews aren’t clothing. “Stitcher” seemed too tied up with making stitches by hand, or embroidery and threadcraft, which was irrelevant to the job and also something he knew nothing about. Sewer–although correct–is, as he put it, an unfortunate homonym. “Person Who Sews” looks and sounds awkward. Seamstress was basically the thing he needed, but did not want to use a gendered word on his resume. It would introduce a lot of unnecessary confusion and distraction into the job screening process, and confusion and distractions rarely help anyone get hired.

Had there been another gender-neutral term for “person who sews” he’d have never encountered this problem. And it’s a common problem–people find themselves in situations where they are doing the same job everyone else is but with a title that excludes them. My brother had trouble communicating efficiently to a potential employer that he had relevant sewing skills, simply because the best term available limited itself to women. The word’s construction excludes men by its very definition, and men who want to be recognized for their sewing-but-not-tailoring skills have a layer of obscurity they have to work through that does not affect women doing the exact same work.

Seems perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? He came up with the word “seamstro” (you heard it here first!), which has a nice ring to it, and expresses pretty efficiently what he wanted to express (although in the end he went with “sewer” on the resume and hoped context clues would apply). He encountered a problem with a gendered term and so coined a new word to include everyone. No big deal, right?

Except, for some reason, when women coin gender-neutral terms (at least in English) to solve the same problem for themselves, it becomes a big deal; it frequently balloons into controversy. You’d think that feminists were trying to overturn all traditions and rules of English grammar to appease a small, radical group of activists at the expense of everyone else. The title “Ms.” (versus Mrs. or Miss) was consciously adopted by women who wanted an equivalent to “Mr.”–a title that did not indicate their marital status (ie, sexual availability) in professional or social settings. The term is older than Ms. Magazine, but that magazine’s popularity put it into common knowledge by the 1970s. The media fought it hard, though, and some newspapers (I’m looking at you, New York Times) flat-out refused to use it. Then the “problem” of writing about vice-presidential candidate Mrs. John Zaccaro–I mean, Geraldine Ferraro–came up, and language columnist William Safire (very grudgingly) conceded that the solution to the problem would be to just use the damn title Ms. (my phrase, not his) and be done with it. It broke his heart, he said (his words, not mine), that the time had finally come for it, that newspaper editors were finally out of the business of disclosing whether women who made the news were sexually available or not, and were putting the responsibility of finding out on the readers who cared to find out. (You can read all about it in his column “Goodbye Sex, Hello Gender” from 1984, which I found via Google News at the Lakeland Ledger.) Despite all the brouhaha and handwringing and end-of-an-era sentiments over it a few decades ago, the title now is so ubiquitous it appears in the United States on everything from government forms to online surveys, and nobody bats an eye. People use it out of habit even with women they know the marital status of. Nobody is confused, nobody is marginalized, everybody wins.

The same thing happened with schoolmarm (teacher), aviatrix (pilot), stewardess (flight attendant), Women’s Army Corps (Army), fire- and policeman (firefighter and police officer), and waitress (server, at least at the family restaurant chains I frequent). Chairman (chairperson or simply chair) is more recalcitrant. Every so often I’ll be at a meeting when the person who is actually acting as chair of a committee makes some grumpy, grumbling remark about how he’s a human being and not a piece of furniture and how burdensome the extra syllable in chairperson is. It’s annoying. It’s annoying because it is far more burdensome to explain how burdensome the word is than to just use the word, and it’s annoying because it’s a reminder that the term this person who is the leader prefers is one that excludes by definition the women who have volunteered their time and effort (and sometimes money) to support this particular venture.

Women don’t come up with gender-neutral terms because they are offended by the old term, or want to push some “feminist agenda”–they just find themselves doing tasks that are identical to tasks men are doing, and want to be recognized for their efforts. Clinging to the old term out of spite because you wanna or because you think it better meets some objective standard of efficiency, or derailing a conversation for the purpose of questioning the need for the new term in the first place actually is offensive, though (you’re telling women to their face that they don’t need to be recognized for work they do), so if you end up in an argument about the gender-neutral term anyway, realize that it’s an argument you started and it’s an argument that’s not really about the usefulness of the word.

I don’t know what gender-neutral term is coming down the pipeline that women will start using and will start expecting everyone else to use, but when it appears, and when you find out why women prefer this new term over the common term that has been excluding them, just start using the new one. If you forget and someone reminds you about the new term, just toss out a quick “sorry” and then repeat your sentence with the new word in place, so you can actually have a discussion about the topic you actually wanted to talk about. It’ll be as easy to pick up the habit of the new word as it was to pick up the habit of the word “blog” (a word coined on purpose to represent a new kind of activity that very few people were familiar with once). Give it a few months, and the new gender-neutral term will sound natural and the old exclusionary term will sound archaic.

Just think of the seamstros! Or maybe seamstroes. (I’ll wait for the OED to figure that one out.) Regardless, do it for them, and also for all those women you wish were more actively involved in skepticism, and all those women in the skeptical movement who are tired of talking about stupid crap like why gender-neutral terms are valuable instead of the skeptical business of the day.

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#30 It doesn’t matter if you didn’t intend to be sexist.

If someone were to compile a list of common excuses that should have been apologies, “I didn’t mean it like that” would be at the top of the list. This is a rule that applies to the world at large as well as to the skeptical community. Many a conversation about the lack of women in skepticism and the pervasiveness of sexism in the environment has gone off the rails at the point where someone will point out that a certain word or behavior is sexist (or racist, or ableist, or classist, or transphobic), and the person who has uttered or performed that word or behavior insists that it’s not sexist because he or she didn’t mean it like that.

Oh, words! Always meaning things to other people that the speakers don’t mean themselves! What is a person to do?

What a person is to do is understand that language exists in a context, not a vacuum, and every time a word is uttered it carries with it not some pure, limited meaning but a complicated history full of significance and meaning that varies by person. Words that might be inoffensive  in one context (like labeling a vagina in biology class) become very sexist and demeaning in another (like labeling a politician a vagina when you disagree with her politics)–and sometimes you won’t know in advance what those words and contexts are! Seems very unfair, I know, but that’s how language works. Furthermore, the intent of one person to not be sexist is not more powerful than the actuality of other people experiencing sexism, and an audience–not a speaker–decides if a word is sexist or not. And the decision of that group of people that another word is not sexist to them doesn’t mean that the word is never sexist to any other group ever. If a single woman takes offense at a remark that no other person in the world would consider sexist, that remark is still harmful to her. If you care about that single woman and you do not want to harm her, you will not repeat that remark. Her reaction to the word determines its offensiveness, not your intent to be nice when you were unknowingly hurtful.

Your intent to not be sexist doesn’t make you not sexist. Not intending to be sexist matters if someone is judging your character, but not as much as immediately trying to make amends for having been sexist if you’ve been called out for it. Apologizing immediately matters, and checking your vocabulary in the future matters, and might make your protestations about not meaning to be sexist sound believable. It won’t undo the harm you caused even inadvertently, but it can keep you from causing more harm later.

Here are some things you should not do if called out for having said something sexist that you did not intend to be sexist:

1. Begin an etymological argument about how the origin of the word is not sexist.
2. Accuse the listener of being too sensitive about language.
3. Make a list of other words or behavior that other people do that might be sexist.
4. Make a list of all the things you have done in the past to prove you couldn’t be sexist.

Wrapping the banner of I Didn’t Intend It That Way around you doesn’t make sexism within the active skeptical movement disappear, and it doesn’t make the women who want to participate in skepticism immune to its harmful effects. Protesting that you don’t intend to hurt women doesn’t mean very much if your next sentence announces your intent to keep using language you’ve just been told hurts women, especially if your third sentence attempts to portray women who have asked you to check your language as evil censors who are trying to undermine free speech. The right to use sexist language, purposefully or accidentally, is yours to claim, but it might counter your attempts to bring more women into your community. If you care more about using sexist words than you care about bringing women into skepticism, then that’s just your priority. Just realize how one affects the other.

For an even better example of how intent is irrelevant, click through to this essay, “Intent! It’s Fucking Magic!” from the blog Genderbitch: Musings of a Trans Chick. It’s what inspired the topic of this post, but Genderbitch says it better than I have, and provides charts and examples to boot!

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#29 Don’t take criticism of sexism personally if you aren’t sexist.

So it’s an old conversation by now.

Question: Why aren’t more women actively involved in the skeptical community?
Answer: Because of this and this, which is sexist.
Exclamation: How dare you call me sexist! I’ve never done that! You are too rude to listen to.

Whereupon much time is wasted by people (usually men) taking offense at outrageous insult, demanding apologies from women, and generally having to be mollycoddled back into civility so that the conversation about why the aforementioned behaviors are keeping women out of sexism, until somebody (usually a man) hears about another behavior that discourages women from active participation and the histrionics start all over again. It is apparently impossible for some people to hear general advice given to a group without explicit, upfront statements that reassure them that of course they’ve personally done nothing wrong and it only refers to other people in very specific ways. To have their points of view and their thoughts considered, women are asked to walk on eggshells around the feelings of men who–by their own admission–are not the people who the remarks are about.

It’s a very mysterious phenomenon. Somehow it is possible for the exact rhetorical device to be employed in other contexts without individuals taking offense at having to hear it. For example, the following statements have been uttered in the skeptical community without anyone not intended to receive the advice taking offense:

• Don’t drink and drive.
• Don’t use hand sanitizer.
• Don’t buy kittens from pet stores.
• Don’t get an adjustable rate mortgage.
• Don’t make claims without citing your sources.

You know what doesn’t happen when someone who works in finance tells people to not get adjustable rate mortgages? People with fixed rate mortgages don’t take it personally. Why not? Because it isn’t about them. They understand that the advice is for other people who have performed that behavior, and they move on. They don’t react with shock that anyone would offer the advice to not get adjustable rate mortgages without first excusing all the people who have gotten fixed rate mortgages or no mortgage at all and then complimenting those fixed rate/no mortgage people for being so wise and rational. They don’t claim to be sorely offended by being lumped in a group by the finance person with all those people who got adjustable rate mortgages. They don’t demand apologies from the super-rude financier before listening to the arguments about why adjustable rate mortgages are undesirable. They don’t suggest that if the financier wants to be taken seriously he or she better be much more polite to all those people the financier wasn’t talking to.

The financier wasn’t talking to people with fixed rate mortgages. People who get fixed rate mortgages don’t have to change their behavior. Nobody assumes that the financier was talking to people who get fixed rate mortgages when the financier said to not get adjustable rate mortgages. Of course not! Because it isn’t about them, and because the usage of the phrase “people, don’t do that” is never assumed to be directed at anyone who isn’t doing that, with one exception: women telling men to change their behavior.

Women who want to suggest that men change behavior are not allowed to use the same rhetorical device that anyone else telling any other group to change any behavior is allowed to use. For some reason, even men who don’t engage in sexist behaviors take offense at a woman telling other men who do engage in sexist behaviors to not engage in those behaviors. This is very strange, and makes no sense, unless at least one of the following conditions is true:

1. Those men think every woman is talking to them all the time.
2. Those men are offended when women tell any man to change his behavior.
3. Those men don’t want to admit to behaviors women say are sexist.
4. Those men want the option of engaging in sexist behaviors in the future.

It’s the only explanation. Otherwise, why would men who do not engage in sexist behaviors be personally offended and demand apologies from women who were given advice to other people? If one of the four items on the list didn’t apply to a particular man, he should not take it personally… unless one of the four items applies to him. In which case he should stop complaining that the woman is unfairly lumping him with other men, unless he thinks the allegiance of men against women is more important than women speaking up about what they want before they join your group.

If someone is critiquing behavior you don’t engage in, don’t make it your problem. If you want to be distanced from the group described as engaging the behavior, don’t claim offense when that group is criticized. If someone fails to exclude you explicitly and with reverence before offering generic advice about male behaviors that you don’t do, treat it as if you were hearing advice about mortgages you don’t have. Don’t take personally what applies to other people just because a woman is bringing up behaviors men do.

If you are so outraged that a woman is critiquing some other guy’s behavior, you have probably already identified with the other guy; she doesn’t have to do the work of lumping you together because you’ve already done it for her. If you are taking criticisms about sexism personally, there might be a reason for it (see the numbered list above). If you know for certain you do not engage in the sexist behaviors a woman has identified, ignore her. Don’t argue just to argue. It doesn’t solve any problems, and it makes those problems last longer. She isn’t talking to you. Don’t make it about you when it’s not, unless it is. And if it is, listen. And don’t demand special treatment from women giving advice about avoiding sexism if you wouldn’t demand it from mortgage advisors about mortgages, or animal advocates about adopting animals, or public service announcements about driving drunk, or doctors about antibiotic resistant bacteria, or skeptics demanding that you have good sources to support your claims.

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#28 Don’t insist on “sex-positive” feminism.

First, a primer, from a person with only a very basic understanding of the subject.

“Sex-positive” feminists (self-described) are often placed at odds with purported “sex-negative” feminists (not a word they use themselves; they just call themselves “feminists”) over subjects like sex work (ie, prostitution and pornography). There is lots and lots of overlap between the two groups, but it can be grossly simplified into the idea that sex-positive feminists approve of sex work, and believe that it is a job like any other that should not be criminalized or stigmatized, and might benefit from government oversight and regulation. Non-sex-positive feminists believe that sex work institutions are harmful to women, as individuals and as a class, and fight against legitimizing it. “Sex-negative” is a pejorative term for this group of feminists and not a label they use to describe themselves. They may, in fact, like sex, and may not, actually, stigmatize interpersonal sexual relationships; the harm they attribute to sex work is political and cultural, and very often violent at the individual level. The way they describe the consequences of sex work makes people feel bad about prostitution and porn, and when conversations turn to prostitution and porn, they can be real buzzkills.

Lots of men prefer talking to sex-positive feminists rather than feminists (according to the differences denoted above), because lots of men like prostitution and porn, particularly when the financial transaction makes it easy to pretend that it’s just business and there are no victims (at least when prostitution and porn are done correctly). Prostitution and pornography come up as topics fairly frequently within skeptical communities (frequently, that is, for a scientific and technical interest), largely because of the large proportion of men within the community (men are the primary consumers of the sex trades). It comes up because people within communities are social and talk to each other about lots of different things, and porn is a common bonding experience for men online. It’s when women get involved in these conversations (about porn or prostitution) as analyzers (rather than as providers) that you then start to hear about “sex-positive” and “sex-negative” feminists. Sex-positive feminists don’t mind porn in theory; “sex-negative” feminists do. The use of these labels delineates to women which types of feminists are welcome to participate within that skeptical environment. Hint: “Sex-negative” feminists are told to like it or leave it. Sex-positive feminists are told to explain why porn and prostitution are really OK if done correctly (and they usually will).

End primer.

This entire business about the fake category of “sex-negative” feminism keeps the number of women participating in active skepticism to a minimum. Is it a conspiracy to keep porn around? I dunno. Scapegoating a less visible population is certainly a tried-and-true tactic of vilifying an “other” to promote in-group bonding. More or less demanding (by misrepresenting the women who vary from the rule) that women be sex-positive or be elsewhere means that women who are put off by the incorporation of sex into skepticism will stay out of your community; the risk comes in not knowing what percentage of women feel that way. Is it a majority of women? I dunno. Is the percentage of women in skepticism an indicator at all? I dunno (but the majority of women are not actively involved). But defining in narrow terms which women are welcome in skepticism is going to work against your efforts to recruit more women to the cause.

And this is the most astonishing thing: Who cares about sex-positive feminism within skepticism? Why on earth does a woman have to be a sex-positive feminist to help you with your letter-writing campaign to keep creationism out of textbooks? How is tolerating pornography relevant to the anti-vaccination movement? What does the politcal topic of regulating prostitution have to do with collecting data for human-caused global warming? And why do you want women to give you permission to mix up sex with skepticism in the first place? Why are you trying to bring sex into the business of skepticism? Which do you care about more? What does sex-positive feminism have to do with skeptical anything, outside of skeptical inquiry to the effects of sex work? The answer is nothing. There is no legitimate skeptical reason to invent and deploy (and then dismiss) a category of women who won’t overlook your non-skeptical, sexual behaviors within the community except that you don’t want to give the behaviors up and you don’t want to examine the reasons why. Like I said, buzzkill. And for some reason, separating sex business from skeptical business never seems to be an acceptable option.

I mean, it’s one thing to have a discussion about the potential harm of sex work or the possible benefits of legalizing or regulating sex work, and for people to discuss philosophy and data to support their arguments. (And these types of discussions might occur more often as more women become leaders within the skeptical movement, but they are not common now.) Supporting or decrying potential legislation, for example, based on evidence and reason falls well within the skeptical umbrella, but to fully explore the topic you’d need sex-positive feminists and other feminists and people who haven’t thought about it at all. Drumming out non-sex-positive feminists before the conversation can even be had would institutionalize biases and preconceived notions, and prejudice the group to conclusions about it. That’s not good skepticism. And if you’ve gone out of your way to denigrate non-sex-positive feminists beforehand, the ones you invite to participate in the discussion you’ve already predisposed your community to take less seriously.

The only place sex-positive feminists and non-sex-positive feminists come into conflict is within the scope of sex work and the politics of sex. Manufacturing conflict within non-sex work topics because you want to keep the sexytime in skepticism is going undermine your efforts to bring more women into the fold. Non-sex-positive feminists are not enemies to the skeptical movement. Requiring sex-positive feminism–be it officially or by casting aspersions on and creating strawmen about non-sex-positive feminism–unnecessarily alienates potential allies. There are a lot of women out there who could help you. Don’t pit them against each other over sex.

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#26 Social change isn’t caused by time passing.

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”  –Red Queen to Alice, Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

I haz an epigraph! Seems fitting to engage in a bit of literary tradition in the same post in which I engage also in a bit of blogger tradition and link to and analyze an article from another website (and toss out a lot of cliches instead of coining original phrases):

“Push to Talk: The Tricky Business of Being a Woman on Vent” by Becky Chambers, which tackles the subject of sexism within the gaming community. (I must thank Skepchick.org for sending me to the article in the first place; is that enough attribution?) Here’s the pertinent passage from Chambers’s article:

For those of you who have gone through really rough times in game, I know this is over-simplifying. Yes, those encounters hurt. Yes, they’re unfair. Yes, it’s scary and infuriating to have some stranger’s voice coming into your home while you’re trying to unwind after work or school, preying on you solely because of your gender. But you’re still here. You’re still playing, just like the girls who fought for their own baseball gloves forty years ago. Hang in there. It is getting better. It’s just going to take some time.

“It takes time” is a very common excuse for why sexism exists within the skeptical movement, too. “Old people have old-fashioned ideas,” young people say, “and when they have retired from the movement/society/politics/business, they will take their sexist ideas with them and everyone will be equal and happy and fine.” This statement, which masquerades as comforting, is simply a way of passing the buck and avoiding the problem, thus freeing anyone alive right now of any responsibility to actually do something to eliminate sexism in the skeptical movement. Waving your hands for twenty-five years until today’s babies grow up is an ineffective strategy for social change. Furthermore, old people just don’t die like they used to, and they retire from their positions at later and later ages. You can’t rely on their sexist attitudes (which no one actually bothers to confirm are their actual attitudes and not attitudes held by a lot of people of different ages) dissipating, especially if everyone who works with them picks up their sexist habits and practices them in the decades ahead. That’s just setting up a situation of new old people, same old sexism. And telling women to be (passively) patient and chastising the ones who go “too far” to expose the problem caused by sexism (see below) is another tired example of what appropriate behaviors for women are supposed to be.

What the excuse of “it takes time” reveals is a profound unawareness of how social change happens (hint: lots of arguing and fighting is how social change happens). Here is the next paragraph of the passage, which reveals more profound unawareness of how social change happens, and includes two icky tropes to boot:

And yes, gentlemen, some women take their ire too far. I know that many of you would never dare to say the things that get spat at us. Try to remember that the anger you’re encountering is often a defense mechanism. Tell the jerks to shut up and welcome the ladies who want to play.

Icky Trope 1: The need for women to “sweeten” their message to men–excuse me, gentlemen–by flattering them before making super-polite nudges towards bare minimum decency (true gentlemen tell jerks to shut up and welcome ladies without having to be reminded)

Icky Trope 2: Psychologizing women’s anger, thereby diminishing it and making it easier to dismiss (it’s just a defense mechanism, and it isn’t rational)

Ineffective Strategy for Social Change 2: Telling jerks to shut up and be nicer to women (talk is cheap)

You know that phrase, “We’re as mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore”? Women are as mad as hell about inequality and sexism and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Instead, they take radical steps (boycotting things and telling men they are behaving badly without complimenting them first is what passes for radical within the skeptical community) and make life unpleasant for a lot of people. So unpleasant, in fact, that these people have to reevaluate what they liked so much about sexism (and there is a lot to like); so unpleasant, in fact, that they actively seek out ways to make pain go away (stimulus, response! it’s biology!). Squeaky wheels get oil. That’s what causes social change. Reassuring the perpetrators and enablers of sexism that they are very good people and that these women’s criticisms don’t apply to them reinforces the status quo. Telling sexist people to not be sexist doesn’t cause social change. Making rules about sexist behaviors and enforcing sanctions causes social change. And never letting your guard down for a minute once you’ve achieved some modicum of social change only might help you keep your social change in place, as the Red Queen and anyone following laws about reproductive rights in the United States (or Title IX, a law referred to in the Vent article) already knows.

There are jerks online, yes, and some of them can be downright cruel, particularly when anonymity comes into play. But that’s true anywhere. I’ve had my share of unpleasant things said to me at bars, but that doesn’t mean I shun such places in favor of drinking at home with my blinds drawn just because some idiot said something untoward about my boobs. If someone insults you, find someone else to play with. If a guild is giving you a hard time, find another one, or start your own. I cherish the friends I’ve made online, and I’ve had a blast gaming with them over the years. I hate the thought that people are missing out on this amazing digital playground solely because of those previously mentioned bad apples. Don’t let them win.

1. “Putting up with unpleasantness” versus “staying home alone” is a false dichotomy. Being abused is not a requirement of being social, and there are plenty of places women can spend their time and pursue their goals without experiencing it. The author herself provides an example of how she has actively created such a space in her very next sentence.

2. The toleration of “bad apples” who perpetuate sexism, within the gaming community or within the active skeptical movement, means that your “playground” is not an amazing thing that women who stay away are missing out on. It means it is a sucky environment that some women have found a way to endure.

3. “Don’t let them win”? If you’ve acknowledged that people within your community are working against women and you are not kicking out those people and/or shouting them down, they’ve already won. You’re following rules that they’ve set, and a generation’s worth of time letting them run unchecked will make them stronger.

Time is not on your side. Patience is not a virtue. The waiting is not the hardest part. Well-behaved women seldom make history. You’ve gotta fight for your right to <verrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-erb!>.

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#25 Not every perspective on sexism is helpful.

When women try to explain the ways in which sexism–certain, specific aspects and behaviors of sexism–has kept them out of active participation of skepticism, they receive a fairly consistent set of responses. Some people listen to what the woman say, show them empathy and try to change what they do; some people react angrily to the woman and dismiss them or blow off the problem as insignificant; some people listen to what the women say and then go to great lengths to explain why they’ve been doing these sexist things and why they will continue to do them, and offer other insights from the giving end of sexism to help the women better understand the situation they are complaining about.

Explanations range from these complicated assumptions about biological sex differences and the fate of the human race, some tap into a long cultural history of gender roles, and some describe how personality quirks of individual people make it just so much harder to move through life without doing those things. Each one of these explanations is full of details, and human interest, and tells a story about one person’s struggle to get by, and can teach women lots and lots of things they may not know about what it’s like to be sexist. In fact, some of these explanations is so detailed and data rich that you could spend a whole week analyzing them from a psychological and sociological perspective. There’s probably material for ten dissertations in these stories! But if you are trying to reach out to women who have been avoiding active participation in skepticism for a list of reasons they can articulate, spending a lot of time delving into these stories from the delivery side of sexism is a pretty big waste of time.

Knowing a hundred things about why people do the things that keep women out of skepticism doesn’t make it more appealing to them. Having a better understanding of why people want to continue being sexist doesn’t make being on the receiving end of sexism more palatable. A woman might perfectly comprehend why some guy really, really feels like his only option is to hit on her when she’s alone in an elevator late at night and still not want him to do it. She might appreciate all the reasons why a group thinks feminism is outside the scope of skepticism and still disagree with their conclusion. She might believe that you tried to get more women speakers on your panel and still judge you for not trying harder. Having a really, really good excuse for maintaining a sexist environment doesn’t obligate women to excuse it.

If you want more women in your skeptical community and those women have told you what needs to change before they join, and you just spend a lot of time talking about why it’s been like that, you aren’t helping to solve the problem. You’re just talking, and when you are done talking, these women aren’t going to overlook all the sexism and then just join your community. They are going to repeat their list of what needs to change. All you will have done is made the process of recruiting more women to active participation in skepticism take longer.

Your perspective of why sexist behaviors exist may be fascinating, but sharing it here is not helpful. If you want to help solve the problem of increasing the number of women actively participating in skepticism, either address the issues women identify as keeping them out of the skeptical community or state up front you are not willing to accommodate them. Don’t stall the conversation by filibustering. Let the women work with you to make your skeptical environment more welcoming or let them move on to another organization that will be able to meet their needs, and spare everyone the distraction of your off-topic tale.

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#24 Don’t dismiss feminism as “unscientific.”

It’s easy for some people to brush off claims about sexism within skepticism on the grounds that “feminism” isn’t “scientific.” Skepticism has been associated in the culture at large (and within skepticism) as the cousin of the scientific method and technological advancement, and good skeptics always demand that claims be backed up with reason and evidence. Making complaints about sexism often comes in the form of anecdotes, however, and for people who are either very reluctant to admit to sexism within skepticism or else who downplay its affects or significance, criticizing feminism as unscientific and thus out of skepticism’s range wraps up the matter to their satisfaction quite nicely: they can say they are treating the matter as it should be treated and then they can ignore everything they hear.

There are problems with this approach. First of all, feminism is a philosophy. It is not supposed to be scientific, and dismissing it as unscientific is sort of a nonsequitur and is pointless. Nobody makes the claim that it is scientific(is that a strawman?).  Feminism is about beliefs and values, such as believing that women and men should have equal rights and protections and valuing this belief enough to fight for it. It doesn’t require proof, or data, or predictability, or falsifiability, or repeated results. You either believe that women and men should have equal rights and protections or you don’t. You either value this belief enough to fight for it or you don’t. You can be a skeptic and not believe that women and men should have equal rights and protections; you can be a skeptic and not value gender equality enough to fight for it. Feminism has absolutely nothing to do with what skepticism is about.

That said…

If you are a member of a skeptical community that wants more women to join and yet does not value (or hold) the belief that men and women should have equal rights and protections enough to fight for them, do not expect more women to join. You don’t have to want more women to join; that’s your decision to make. If that’s not a community you want to have, though, you’re going to have to incorporate feminism into your community’s philosophy.

On the other hand, sexism can be documented by science, at least so far as the scientific method has been adapted to the spheres of psychology, sociology, law and judicial review, educational theory, history, medicine, and other avenues of rigorous research and peer-review. There are, as I’ve said before, thousands of published articles printed in hundreds of academic journals, dozens of which are dedicated to the topic of sex and gender. There is ample evidence of sexism–deliberate and institutional–in every professional endeavor, particularly in the science and technology fields (where the imbalance between men and women is particularly glaring and where the people are already in a data-collection mindset). If it’s accepted as a given–I haven’t done or looked for any research on this, but the idea is bandied about as pseudofact–that the skeptical movement draws heavily from the science and technology fields, then it’s very highly likely that the prejudices and sexism of those fields will be largely repeated in the skeptical movement. Why wouldn’t they be? People don’t view women one way at the lab and a totally completely different way at a skeptical conference or online. And it’s the same people in both places.

Of course it is true that no one has yet published a peer-reviewed, longitudinal study of the prevalence of sexism within the skeptical community. It’s true that women complaining about sexism in skepticism can’t provide that kind of evidence, but that doesn’t make them unscientific with baseless claims and assertions. Alternately, refusing to consider the problem of sexism within skepticism until you have that kind of evidence does not make you scientific. Women making claims of sexism can find empirical data to support their interpretations of the negative experiences they endure because of sexism in skepticism, and they can provide anecdote after anecdote of women reporting shockingly similar events all across the skeptical community, and they can predict with great accuracy what a conversation about sexism with skepticism would sound like (and run the experiment again and again and again). Meanwhile, the sexism deniers (yes, I intend all connotations of that word choice) are the ones who enter the conversation with a hypothesis based on what they want to belief about the skeptical community and hold on tight to that belief no matter they hear or read. They find ways to massage data to fit their predetermined hypothesis instead of going with the simplest explanations, and toss out data that undermines it. Fudging, I believe, is one term for it.

So we’ve got on the one hand people who adhere to the philosophy of feminism who can harness scientific data about sexism in society and make strong correlations to sexism within skepticism, and people who behave as if critiquing feminism as unscientific means something and who fudge data to fit their preexisting hypothesis. I don’t think it’s the feminists who are misusing the scientific method to prove their point.

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#23 Don’t leave it to women to always bring up sexism.

If you want more women in skepticism, and the women who are not actively participating in skepticism say that sexism–how it manifests, how it’s handled–is keeping them out of active participation, then you have to do something to address sexism. If it’s your priority to have those women fully participating in your community, then you need to proactively address the problems they designate as impediments.

Ignorance is no longer an excuse. The conversation about sexism has been going on in the skeptical community for a couple of years, minimum (and in science and technology at least twenty years, and in general society for at least fifty). Even the people who don’t agree that sexism is a real problem ought to be by now well-versed in the basic arguments: stop sexually objectifying women, stop assuming there’s a biological reason women aren’t more involved, do more to promote skepticism to women, yadda yadda. What everyone seems to do within the skeptical community, however, is nothing about it, at least not until a woman finds a platform to address the subject and then it turns into a conversation of reactions to instead of preventing against. At least, that’s what most people do. With the exception of a very few men, just about everyone has left sexism in the hands of the women to solve, which is not a great place to leave it if you are trying to get more women to participate in the first place.

For starters, women are such a small number within skepticism that there aren’t really enough of them to speak up as a group or create real consequences for the people who engage in sexist behaviors (consequences like embarrassment and shame, so people will stop doing those things–nobody’s getting booted out). It is very difficult for most women’s individual voices to be heard, and because there are so few women who are leaders within the skeptical movement, them making the same observations and suggestions over and over again starts to sound a lot like they are just particular people with particular problems–possibly unique to their celebrity–and it’s easy to ignore the general atmosphere that affects all the women in favor of focusing on the specific personalities and travel plans of these individual leaders. Furthermore, the bulk of skeptical women are not in active skepticism. If they are vocal and outraged outside of the community very few people can hear them; the ones who wander over just to make their points to an established group of skeptical people who has never encountered them before lack a fair bit of, well, street cred. They certainly face an uphill battle trying to be taken seriously as interlopers with a problem that doesn’t seem to interest most people in the community. Finally, the regular women within skepticism are active participants because they are interested in skeptical things. They get tired of always being the one to have to talk about sexism, especially when the conversations turn out to be such unpleasant events. It’s easier to put up with the crap instead of tackling the crap, and it leaves them more time for other things. And frankly, it gets old. It’s the same old conversation over and over, and they can predict at this point which skeptic that they know is going to say what, and they’ve run the experiment enough times to be confident of the outcome, which so far has been no change. (These are also women you are at risk of losing when they finally do get tired of it altogether.)

Meanwhile, sexism persists and women stay away (and some leave), and despite your wish to have more women actively participating in skepticism you don’t.

Men are going to have to take on this argument themselves. First of all, there are far more many men than women, so even if a fewer percentage of men than women care about the problem there are still more men than women to speak up and do something about it. The group tackling sexism within skepticism could literally double in size (or more!) if everyone who agreed it was a problem acted. Second of all, there’s this unfortunate fact that a lot of people ignore or disagree with statements that women make only to mysteriously hear or agree with the same statements when men make them. (There is proof of this everywhere. Just start looking around.) It’s appalling that this happens in a community so ostensibly proud of valuing the argument and evidence above bias and preconceptions, but it’s another predictable (and demonstrated) outcome that they will do this, and if a man telling other people that sexism is a problem for women in skepticism so the community gets more people to listen, then that means more people will be aware of–and ideally interested in solving–the problem.

But this is the most important thing:

When men start speaking out against sexism in the community, and start taking steps towards educating people about it and eradicating it, it lets women know that they are valued–not merely tolerated–as members. That the community is actually a community that considers the personal needs of the people who are helping further the goals as important to the success of skepticism. People who feel they are part of a functioning community are more invested in its success. It also frees up women from the role of being nags, blamers, crabby harpies, and Generally Unpleasant People for always Making Everyone Else Mad and Airing Dirty Laundry to the Already Dubious Public–a negative role that contributes heavily to negative stereotypes about women, and thus demeans them further within the group–and enables them to be full participants who can dedicate their time to actual skeptical projects. You know that adage,”Many hands make light work”? The more people who are calling out sexism when they see it and doing their best to end it, the faster the chore will go. And if that’s taken care of, you’ll have more time and energy available to the fun stuff.

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