I wrote a while back about how some of the atheists had
conflated civility and "safety", i.e. ideological conformity; apparently the
shunning has begun in earnest, now that "there's an excellent chance that the top of your head came off" when thinking about the awful, sexist, racist, every other -ist
Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Already, they're casting the wrongthinkers out of the tent:
Thirdly (and you knew I would get to this) there are conflicts within
the atheist movement. We often neglect to assume best intentions, which
is a strategy necessary for healthy collaboration. But assuming best
intentions with our fellow atheists is a challenge when there is a small
cadre of atheists whose intentions are not kind or respectful but
threatening and abusive, specifically towards women who identify and
criticize sexism. There are also a substantial number of community
members, many of whom I call friends, who don't always differentiate
that cadre's hateful and violent speech from respectful disagreement.
This has led to a ever-widening chasm between the "let's all get along"
folk and a number of prominent atheist feminists.
The hateful
cadre? They can go to nonexistent hell. No one who makes any kind of
threat belongs in the atheist community. The rest of us would benefit
from figuring out how to work together. That would require the "let's
all get along" folk to stop referring to threats and hate speech as
"disagreement." And it would require us feminists to be very careful
ourselves about not mistaking disagreement or ignorance for unforgivable
bigotry. As Bernice Johnson Reagon said, "a coalition is not a home";
we should not need to agree or even feel comfortable with each other to
work together.
Except, of course, when they
should. Just as a reminder, one of the many things that set off the prior round of atheist exorcism was Dawkins retweeting a woman questioning the existence of sexism within atheist groups (and positing a reason why so many
do find it):
Well, of course,
burn the witch, &c. I don't doubt Dawkins can be pugilistic; it seems a fairly defining feature of modern atheistic discourse. But the insane equivalence of legitimate disagreement with "hate speech" shows just how petty and juvenile the movement has become.
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