In episode 34 we talk about the recent and not-so-recent allegations of sexism with the atheist movement, specifically the three prominent atheists Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Michael Shermer. All three are in hot water over sexist comments or questionable behavior, which raises the question, just how rampant is sexism within the atheist movement? Guest starring rabid fan Leela Moses.
Oh, and Skunk Vaginas too. Because feminism.
43 Responses to “2.34: Feminatheism”
Chuck, Matt, Patreon would be awesome. Would like to support one of the best atheist podcasts around…
Spot on, as usual.
I’m also finding myself feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the movement, but I think it is less because of the stupid shit Dawkins and Harris have said–and the various assaults Shermer is alleged to have perpetrated–and more due to doddering bobbleheads who uncritically and vociferously defend these asshats.
Sure is a lot of worship in this so-called “atheist” movement, and that’s pretty goddamned depressing if you ask me.
This was eye opening to me ..It kind of confirmed my ‘feeling’ about Shermer…he just seems like a douche bag…Dawkins is old, But I still like Sam…I’m a bit disappointed with Randi though. I wonder what Lawrence Krauss thinks about this?…I enjoyed the ‘unbelievers’ doc.I find it sad that we still have to deal with this kind of nonsense in this day and age.
As somebody who didn’t pick up the podcast until after you switched hosts (and in fact finished bible study, which I thought was rad as fuck), can I just say that seeing this title made me nervous? Matt I absolutely adore, and Chuck is great but the old guy… like, you remember that skit you guys did about that elevator flirting thing, and well… yeah. The less said about that the better, I think. Which is why I wrote so many fucking words about it. Suffice to say, I was filled with nervousness when I saw the title of the current episode.
It turns out this was an *excellent* episode, however. Fantastic, thought-provoking (yeah. YEAH.) and actually brave. I’m not used to my podcasts having the kind of balls that they go out with something that they know will probably make a good chunk of their core base drop them. I cannot wait for my next payday to drop Chuck a couple bones.
All I have to say is if I were happy to make excuses for privileged old white dudes who cover sexual predators, I would had stayed religious
Thank you for this episode. I listen to a lot of atheist podcasts and I’ve been troubled by the fact that there has been almost nothing said about this issue. I think a lot of them are afraid of losing a big part of their support by coming out as being on one side or the other. Which pisses me off. This is a big deal and I wish more of the podcasters I follow would take a stand on it.
You three did a pretty darn good job of summarizing what I’ve heard about it and most of what is so troubling about it. (Thanks for bringing on a woman’s voice to participate, too.) Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism had some very insightful things to say about the Harris kerfuffle, if you want to see an aspect you may have missed a bit.
The podcast was phenomenal. Thank you for tackling a serious subject with proper respect considering your normal reverence for most things.
The reason I’m writing is to give you a great alternative to Dawkins when recommending books to those who ask. The bestbook I’ve read with a clear grasp and explanation of evolution is “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne. I’ve recommended it to many people and it is a lot easier to get believers or beginning doubters to read it than any book by Dawkins. Pick it up and see if you don’t agree. It lays out the facts of evolution and provides easy to follow explanations to rebut many typical anit-evolution arguments.
Well done. The old ‘elevator gate’ skit was tough for me listen to as well way back when. I just wasn’t sure what the intended message was.
Dawkins probably needs to step down from the atheist movement and stick with biology, though I agree 100% with the previous comment about Coyne’s ‘Why Evolution is True’is the best book I’ve read that puts together a strong argument for evolution.
Am I the only one bothered by the rampant amount of dishonest criticism and facepalm-worthy pot-shots in this episode? Holy shit, Chuck! You’re too smart to have honestly misunderstood the Sam Harris situation so spectacularly, yet here I am trying to keep my eyerolls to a minimum as you guys throw intellectual honesty out the window in favor of slanderous barbs and forced laughter. This should seriously alarm anyone who values skepticism and reason. To recap: Harris was asked why he thinks his fans are disproportionately male. He opines that his particular style of religious criticism can be percieved as angry and aggressive and, perhaps, that attracts more men than women on average. YOU guys hear “girls aren’t as good at critical thinking as guys”. Then, despite thoroughly explaining all of this clearly in a blog (that you reference), you instead say he “doubled down”? Are you fucking kidding me?
If only we were done. Then you cherry pick a conversation with an irate woman in the audience to make it seem Harris was a dismissive mysogonist for what? Was that what you honestly took away from that exchange? Let’s recap again:
A woman took issue with Harris referring to Sarah Palin’s “lipstick on a pig” debacle as somehow sexist against Palin. She CLEARLY didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. You know this. Harris finally makes it clear to her that he was referencing Palin’s famous misunderstanding of the phrase as an obvious joke and, rather that acknowledge that she was wrong about it, she tells him his comments about why his audience is mostly men is sexist and hurtful to women. He tells her that ,of course, women think as critically as men and he was talking about some possible physiological differences between men and women as a whole (like testosterone) that might attract more men to his angry, aggressive style of religious criticism. And, just like you guys, she hears “women aren’t critical thinkers”. After flatly disregarding Harris’ blatantly clear response, she repeats her charge that Sam’s words were harmful to women (like a fucking idiot). THIS is where he says that she is “determined to be offended” Strangely enough, you guys eliminated every crumb of conent and context in order to make Harris look as if he had no regard for what this buffoon was saying. Your reporting of this entire situation is as clownish as watching Kirk Cameron quote-mine Darwin quotes to call him a racist. Is there some sort of house rule in your studio that compells you to fall to pieces logically when the discussion turns to differences between genders? Every comment about sex isn’t sexist. You three react to gender talk like giggly Hogwatrs students shuddering when someone says “Voldemort”. That’s a Harry Potter reference, so you don’t have to get offended on behalf of women. Sorry for the long post. Every single other episode is awesome so I’ll still listen, but I think we’re really doing a disservice to reasoned conversation by endorsing the kind of hacky bullshit you guys put out this one time.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Chuck and Leighton’s elevatorgate skit was hilarious. It was pure podcast gold. “That skit was tough for me to listen to…” What the fuck is wrong with you people? That whole elevatoragte thing was such an absurd situation just begging to be mocked and Chuck and Leighton did a wonderful job mocking it. You know, most great humor is a bit offensive to someone. In the words of the great Chuck Morrison (in his ballsier days):
If you’re gonna be so easily offended,
1, Don’t listen to the podcast.
2, Don’t go on the internet. Don’t step out into public. Don’t talk to anybody.
3, If you’re going to be so easily offend by people you don’t even know, buy a fainting couch for when you get the fucking vapors so you’ll have something soft to fall on when you faint.
4. Don’t be a woman, because then you are just begging for someone to shit all over you in completely fucking outrageous ways because you exist, and if you comment vocally and in public on anything boy then I sure hope you enjoy being threatened with rape and murder constantly from fucking internet weirdos who can’t stand ladies in their sandbox.
CV,
I’d like to get your take on my gripes (cited in my comment above)with this episode’s egregiously dishonest treatment of Sam Harris with regards to this particular situation. All of the source material (Harris’ blog)is at our fingertips. We can easily read his account of things and compare it to Chuck, Matt, and Leela’s version of his account. This isn’t a case of “he said, she said”. They’re demonstrably revising what Harris himself wrote about the situation in order to paint him as a steadfast and proud mysoginist.
I’m curious to get your take on this. If you haven’t already read the blog in question, I’d ask you to take 5 minutes and do so. It seems to me that Chuck and Matt decided to weigh in on a controversy stemming from an author’s words being misunderstood and decided that we’d be better suited to not bother understanding them. There should be absolutely no controversy over what Harris said if one is honestly processing it. He never suggested in any way that one sex was lacking any ability in comparison to the other. This did not happen.
We can look at this and go in at least two directions. We can acknowledge that this episode was way off the mark, or we can pretend that it’s not a big deal to level accusations of sexism at people. If I’m missing any valid points about this particular incident, I’d love to get your input on it because we seem like polar opposites on this issue at this point. I apologize again for the long post. I’m gabby. Thanks and take care.
Jamie Bernstein has already brought the sick burn
Best book on evolution that I have read, and I’ve read a lot: Neil Shubin’s _Your Inner Fish_ Doesn’t just tell how it works but shows a great example of the predictive powers of evolutionary theory.
I don’t mean to sound like our favorite supreme court justice, but I fear you’ve wandered into a minefield here. I agreed with everything that was said to be honest. Dawkins staying dumb stuff is one thing, but Shermer sounds like he has been trying to drug people so he can rape them. It’s premeditated and predatory. How can it be treated as “oh if he does much more of it he’ll be asked not to attend.” WTF?
I honestly think a lot of he way this is discussed is transfer from internet culture. In a lot of places a standard response to a woman posting something insightful is “tits or get the fuck out.” Anyone who says the person is being rude instantly is labeled a “white knight” as if simply not being an ass is something bad.
On a totally unrelated note, your guest mentioned she was Maori. Does she have any face tattoos?
I haven’t listened to the full episode yet but for those interested in this issue within the online atheist movement Michael Nugent (a very reasonable person) has become embroiled in a war of words with PZ Myers. You can check it out on Michaels blog.
This will only be for those willing to put in the time to read all the posts and comments and back and forth.
To summarize (IMO) PZ Myers has come off as being irresponsible and almost cult-leaderish in his behavior.
I thought the Feminatheism podcast was excellent. Thanks for such a thorough rundown of events. Having Leela on was perfect, I hope she drops in again sometime.
As for your summing up question ‘what can we do?’ well I would say you are doing it. To hear men in the Atheist movement speak thoughtfully about feminism and call out the sexist behaviour is very heartening.
Shermer sounds like a complete dick. Randi also sounds like a moron (and negligent) by his (non)reaction to the allegations.
However I still abide by the notion of due process and innocent until proven guilty. Otherwise we end up with witch hunts. Thus Myers behavior I also view as unacceptable.
I never felt the need to go to one of these TAM-type conferences and I’m never likely to either. Anyway, I don’t drink and from the sounds of things I wouldn’t fit in with all the drunken frat-boys and gals. I also never got the point of the whole pub-crawl skeptic-meeting thing that was prominently pushed by certain members of the skeptic community. Why couldn’t people just meet up and discuss common interests without getting drunk.
Anyway….
Blimey! I’m from NZ and a long time fan so feel dissapointed for a few reasons. Frankly surprised you guys have taken the typical polarised view on this contentious and nuanced issue. Thorough job on your missunderstandings. Thundergoose well said. Gotta hand it to religion for being able to stand in solidarity in tough times.
@Bonnie
Gotta disagree with your standing in solidarity point. I think religion supporting their own is one of it’s biggest problems. Clergy who rape children should be shunned and sent to prison. If Shermer is getting women too drunk to consent then raping them, he should be kicked out of the movement period. That isn’t something I consider nuanced.
I will give to ThunderGoose’s point that some quotes were stretched for ridicule, but seriously, anyone who is upset by that, but not by the fact a woman can barely post on the internet without getting the “Tits or GFO” reply doesn’t get the point.
I thought this was one of Irreligiosophy’s best episodes, and it reminded me I should donate to support the podcast because it is saying things that need to be said.
kbmast,
“some quotes were stretched for ridicule”? That’s all you got out of my post? Step back and look at what you’re doing here. They specifically misrepresented almost every facet of the Sam Harris situation. I called them on it with very specific points and you say what? None of that matters because there are other, actual sexists out there we need to worry about? What is the “point” we aren’t getting? If I publicly accused you (falsely)of molesting my kids and you proved that you didn’t do it, would it sit well with you if everyone just said “There are kids getting murdered with machetes in Africa. Why aren’t you focused on that?” and never acknowledged that my accusation was bullshit? Is that how you operate when it comes to begrudgingly admitting that someone being accused of sexism might actually (gasp!) be innocent? That’s how a creationist argues. You have just dragged that goalpost to the next yard. If you want people to take topics like this seriously, start talking about them seriously. There’s a burden we have when we decide to enter adult conversations and it’s called reasoned critical thinking. When someone says “A” and I say “No, that’s not true. Here’s evidence for B”, an adult wouldn’t say “If you don’t care about C then you don’t get the point” Don’t you see? B IS the fucking point. That’s what was being discussed.
@thundergoose, @bonnie
During this episode, I swear I kept expecting Chuck to suddenly shout, “Psyche! *Ha ha!* Gotcha, motherfuckers!” The farce would be brought to an abrupt, but merciful, end; allowing the real discussion to begin.
I guess I was just really surprised. It was all somewhat “Twilight Zone”-y.
kbmast
**If Shermer is getting women too drunk to consent then raping them, he should be kicked out of the movement period.**
Eh? Did the woman in question not have any say in how much alcohol she consumed? Of course she did, therefore IMO Shermer didn’t get her drunk. She drank and got herself drunk. I live in a culture that is extremely pro-drinking. No-one has ever managed to force me to get drunk.
Having said that, of course taking advantage of anyone who is unable to properly consent is rape. But please don’t be sexist to women and say that the woman was forced to drink by the man and that women have no control over what they do when in the presence of a man.
Tsulaa,
I appreciate your reasoned rationality. What I’m curious about is why I’m not seeing any responses to the points I’ve made from those I made them to. I realize that we all have lives and can’t be responding to every little comment, but this episode was really, really disappointing. You nailed it with the Twilight Zone reference. After reading all about the Sam Harris situation and processing the information like a rational adult, the case was closed for me. 30 seconds into Chuck and Matt’s version of it, I thought I stepped into a fucking wormhole or something.
It reminded me of this weird conversation I had with a staunch right-winger friend of mine who was furious that Nancy Pelosi said Tea Party people were nazis. Of course, she never said that in reality. She was commenting on the ridiculousness of the Tea Party people who had swastika signs at town hall meetings (suggesting that Obama is like Hitler). No matter how many times he heard that interview, his mind was made up that she called him a nazi. It was as if I was trying to reason with a pre-recorded message.
It made me cringe every time Chuck and Matt would say something about women “not being critical thinkers”, knowing that they were attacking a straw man. I felt embarrassed for them. At first I attributed it to them not having followed up on it by reading Harris’ blog. Then it just got creepy when they actually referenced the blog and proceeded to give a clearly intentional misrepresentation of it. I’m dumbfounded.
Finally got a chance to sit down and read through the comments.
Thunder goose seems particularly irritated: Harris was asked why he thinks his fans are disproportionately male. He opines that his particular style of religious criticism can be percieved as angry and aggressive and, perhaps, that attracts more men than women on average. YOU guys hear “girls aren’t as good at critical thinking as guys”. Then, despite thoroughly explaining all of this clearly in a blog (that you reference), you instead say he “doubled down”? Are you fucking kidding me?
I fucking kid you not. Let’s look at what Sam Harris actually said instead of what you say he said: “I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people … People just don’t like to have their ideas criticized. There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women. The atheist variable just has this – it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.”
The salient points I picked out were that “being very critical of bad ideas” was something off-putting to women (hence where I got the message that women are bad at critical thinking), “something about that critical posture” being “to some degree intrinsically male,” and of course, the bullshit about the estrogen vibe, which is taken apart in this article, which somewhere in greece mentioned above and that you never responded to.
I disagree that anything about a critical posture is “intrinsically male.” It’s just a flat out stupid thing to say, and Harris should have known better. Perhaps he meant something different, but that just means he is a poor communicator, which is the problem I have had with him all along. His books are a drudge to slog through, and the points he makes (at least the ones I have got through) are neither interesting nor original.
On to Harris’s blog post. You accuse me of “cherry-picking” apparently because I failed to mention Sarah Palin and the lipstick on a pig portion of the dialogue. I also failed to mention the part where Harris brings up his criticism of Islam. I failed to mention a great many things about the blog post. Why? Because none of it was relevant to the point I was making. I have to leave some things out when I’m making a podcast; I can’t read Boorstein’s entire article and then Harris’s entire rebuttal on air. That you’re a fan of Harris will affect how you perceive what I choose to leave out, just as that I’m not a fan of Harris will affect how I frame the segment and what I choose to talk about. And when Harris chooses to defend himself by a series of idiotic “but my best friends are black” statements (the worst part? he realizes what he is doing but instead of NOT DOING IT he tries to pre-empt the obvious criticism by merely stating “that’s not what I’m doing”) — well, I will focus on that.
If you think that’s “dishonest criticism” or “facepalm-worthy potshots” or “hacky bullshit,” I’m not sure we have anything left to discuss. Feel free to not listen.
Chuck, though I still like much of Shermer/Dawkins/Harris’s work, this was a great episode, very proud of you guys. Been liking the guest hosts you’ve been having too. Though, that makes me wonder whether your easy willingness to criticize fellow skeptics is due to your relative isolation in the larger skeptic and podcasting community. It’s plain to see that that those close to Shermer\Dawkins are less critical. Too few podcasts will even discuss these issues. What I’m saying is don’t lose your inner asshole, and fuck you guys.
Chuck
**Feel free not to listen**
Jeez, c’mon Chuck, that’s just negative. Of course people are going to disagree with you from time to time, sometimes in a big way, but it’s much better to disassemble their arguments than tell them to bugger off. There lies the way of PZ Myers and his toxic blog.
You’ve occasionally said things I don’t agree with (and so do all my friends in real life) but I still think that you do a great job overall. I’m not going to stop listening just because you might say things that I sometimes don’t agree with.
Anyhow, keep up the good work.
Cheers, CW
I think not listening will help keep thundergoose’s blood pressure down. In that sense, it is a very positive piece of advice.
Just think of it as doing my part to help prevent strokes and heart attacks.
Chuck,
While I truly appreciate your the time you took responding to me, I feel as if you’ve done a little “doubling down” yourself on this one. Here’s why this is a problem. The topic of sexism and misogyny among the skeptical/atheist community is extremely relevant right now. An unfortunate side effect of this is the reality that, along with shining a light on the real assholes out there, there’s going to be some undeserved slander as well. Friendly fire, as it were. If we’ve reached the point in the battle against sexism where we’ve decided it’s not worth acknowledging these casualties, perhaps we’re not being as rational and reasonable as we hoped.
I can’t speak for you, but it sounds to me like your distaste for Harris’ style of writing may have acted as a barrier between you and every relevant point he made in that blog. It’s certainly harder to grasp the point of anything when you find it completely boring. But this isn’t a situation where the author’s intent is still unknown. Forgive me for pasting a paragraph here from the blog, but if we’re both reading the same words and still disagree on the message, something is malfunctioning. This is exactly what Harris says about the men/women thing:
“My work is often perceived (I believe unfairly) as unpleasantly critical, angry, divisive, etc. The work of other vocal atheists (male and female) has a similar reputation. I believe that in general, men are more attracted to this style of communication than women are. Which is not to say there aren’t millions of acerbic women out there, and many for whom Hitchens at his most cutting was a favorite source of entertainment. But just as we can say that men are generally taller than women, without denying that some women are taller than most men, there are psychological differences between men and women which, considered in the aggregate, might explain why “angry atheism” attracts more of the former. Some of these differences are innate; some are surely the product of culture. Nothing in my remarks was meant to suggest that women can’t think as critically as men or that they are more likely to be taken in by bad ideas. Again, I was talking about a fondness for a perceived style of religion bashing with which I and other vocal atheists are often associated.”
None of that should be controversial to any rational adult. Neither my appreciation for Harris nor your lack of it should factor in to the black and white reality of those words. Virtually every single issue raised in your podcast about this (including the “my best friends are black” and the “estrogen vibe” shit)could be settled by me copying and pasting the blog here, but then I would deserve dick cancer for taking up too much space. I probably already have it based on the length of this post alone.
Look, don’t mistake this criticism for anything other than a heartfelt concern for the future of rational adult conversation. I’m just as big a fan of Dawkins as I am Harris and I didn’t say a fucking word to defend him. How serious can we take the topic of sexist misogyny in the skeptical community if we can’t be bothered to seriously consider the testimony of the accused?
I AM free not to listen, you handsome son of a bitch. You can’t get rid of me that easily! I wish we had the time to truly hash this out, but it’s already yesterday’s news. Of course I’ll still listen to the show. What kind of an asshole would bail over one disagreement?
This quote here? “My work is often perceived (I believe unfairly) as unpleasantly critical, angry, divisive, etc. The work of other vocal atheists (male and female) has a similar reputation. I believe that in general, men are more attracted to this style of communication than women are ..” etc etc
That was addressed here -> http://skepchick.org/2014/09/sam-harris-doesnt-understand-bell-curves/
This is now the third time you’ve been given that link in this very comment section. It appears, contrary to your assertion, that rational people can and do have problems with that quote of Harris’s, and even that quote can be and is considered controversial by rational people. Since we’re copy-pasting, here’s the relevant portion of that article:
The only way you would be able to see differences between the psychologies of men and women is if those differences were quite large. If the only thing skewing the gender of Sam Harris fans was estrogen-vibe, then the differences between the genders would have to be immense, something which would completely overturn all prior gender research. So, the real question here is whether Sam Harris has discovered the magical x-factor that makes the brains of men versus women very different. This would certainly be a shock to the science of gender differences because no one has ever found psychological differences that pronounced.
Rather than there being some previously-unknown psychological factor that gives women a completely different brain than men, the thing that makes women different is our lived experiences. Women grow up and move through the world in a completely different environment from men. From the time we are born, we are treated differently, under different expectations, and have different roles within our culture. Lived experience does make us women different in ways that are so large that we can see them without the need of a scientific study. We can all see that men tend to like Sam Harris much more than do women. It is far more likely that something about the experiences of men versus women in our culture is the explanation for the differences rather than some psychological difference in our brains.
Does that sound irrational to you?
I don’t ask that you agree with me on every point in the podcast. I don’t particularly care. But to charge in here saying that the episode was filled with a “rampant amount of dishonest criticism and facepalm-worthy pot-shots” or “clearly intentional misrepresentations” is quite ridiculous.
Might be off topic, but it’s not just a problem in atheism. Personally, I’m a little depressed about this. Apparently Bill Cosby is a rapist. And this guy?
Julien Blanc, the ‘female attraction’ expert, glorifies sexual violence.
“Just go through Tokyo, grab girls and yell ‘Pikachu’ and put her head on your dick”, Blanc instructs his audience before showing footage of himself doing just that.
In doing so, he actively instructs men to exploit their white male status to assault women, declaring that “if you’re a white male, you can do what you want”.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/05/julien-blanc-the-female-attraction-expert-glorifies-sexual-violence-the-less-seminars-he-holds-the-better?CMP=share_btn_fb
At least he recognizes his white mail privileged.
Is it getting better because people are calling out stuff like this publicly now? Or is it getting worse because there is more of it?
Chuck,
Okay. This is going to be long, but only because we now have to deal with Bornstein’s article. The important part comes after that.
Bornstein presents us with a chart showing the mean “estrogen vibes” for men and for women in order to conclude that, indeed, there’s no difference between the 2. Let’s count the problems with this.
First, since the controversy is over Harris’ proposed explanation of the facts, let’s lay them out and see what it looks like:
1. Within the skeptical/atheist community (people who are ALREADY categorically counted as skeptical thinkers, mind you), Sam Harris’ audience appears to be made up of more men than women.
2.Harris has a style of religious criticism that can appear (however unfairly) aggressive or dickish.
3.Testosterone, which is significantly higher among men in general, has been shown to play a role in all sorts of aggressive behavior and attitude with regards to sexuality, criminality, risk taking, etc.
4. There’s nothing at all between the 2 genders that would cause one to be more open to skepticism than the other (A fact Harris clearly states).
So here’s where we seem to part ways. There’s nothing sexist about any of those facts. Even if one were to be disproven, at best, we could say that it was incorrect. But, for some reason, if we take what we seem to know about the general aggressiveness of high-testosterone males and count it as a possible factor when trying to explain the greater number of males than females who appear to be drawn to Harris’ aggressive critical tone, we’ve crossed some bizarro line into misogyny. Here’s an analogy in the form of a short fictional conversation to show how this appears to us:
You: Why do you think it’s generally easier to read tattoos on caucasian skin than on darker African American skin?
Me: Well, I’d guess that the level of melanin in their skin would be proportional to how difficult it would be to read the tattoos when compared to someone with little melanin. it appears that more melanin makes darker skin and, therefore, less contrast between the tattoo and the skin.
You: You fucking racist. There’s no difference between Caucasians and African Americans that would cause one to get more or less tattos than the other.
Even if we were to take Bornstein’s article seriously, we’d need to consider that she deals her own argument a death blow before she even presents her silly chart by, essentially, agreeing with exactly what Harris claimed. Sam claims that “there are psychological differences between men and women which, considered in the aggregate, MIGHT explain why “angry atheism” attracts more of the former. Some of these differences are innate; some are surely the product of culture. Nothing in my remarks was meant to suggest that women can’t think as critically as men or that they are more likely to be taken in by bad ideas.” Bornstein shows how wrong and obviously sexist Harris is by setting the record straight on the psychological differences between the sexes when she tells us “When differences are found, it’s unclear whether they are themselves inate or a product of our culture and experiences. If differences exist at all, they are quite small and can only be seen in the aggregate”. Thanks for playing, Jamie! You’ve managed to be outraged and offended over a stance that you agree with. If Harris SPECIFICALLY states that nothing in his remarks is meant to suggest that women can’t think as critically as men and he clearly offers the cultural and experiential influences on each gender as factors, what the fuck is everybody still so angry about?
If I have a dream that you sexually harassed me at work and it bothered me so much that I publicly accused you of sexual harassment, what would be the most reasonable thing for you to do? Convincing me it was a dream won’t work because I’m absolutely convinced you did it. Explaining to me that you detest sexual harrassment would only make me suggest you don’t realize how much of a sexual harrasser you really are. Should you apologize? Is that the most fair and reasonable option to you? Now you’re Chuck, the guy who apologized for sexually harrassing me at work. This is the corner you and Bornstein seem happy and willing to paint Hasrris into. If he says “If you think there are no differences, in the aggregate, between people who have Y chromosomes and people who don’t; if you think testosterone has no psychological effects on human minds in general; if you think we can’t say anything about the differences between two bell curves that describe whole populations of men and women, whether these differences come from biology or from culture, we’re not going to get very far in this conversation.” and you guys conclude that this means women are inferior somehow to men, then Harris was right. You seem determined to be offended. What is the “less than” quality of someone not being attracted to an angry or dickish quality in someone else? If sexism as an idea is to have any intellectual impact on our conversations, we can’t make it a hoop so big that everyone fits through it. Then it’s meaningless. Does Sam Harris make regular sexist pronouncements that would serve as evidence to back up this accusation? After all, it wasn’t enough for him to flat out say that men and women are equally critical thinkers. You took this as evidence that he’s blind to his own misogyny. And, as desperate as he admits it was, you discount everything he says about being raised by a single mother, having his wife as his editor, and believing that women have it worse than men across all categories. That’s laughable to you, for some reason. What’s left? What actions of his are preventing you from thinking that, perhaps, this is the misunderstanding that Harris says it is?
Did you finish reading Bernstein’s article? (Bernstein, the one with the charts, not Boorstein, the one who did the original Harris article) Because it seems you kind of missed the entire point of it. Or maybe you reached a point where you thought you found a logical fallacy and experienced some kind of hormonal surge that made you stop reading. You know, that angry, coherence-destroying, non-nurturing “testosterone vibe.” At the very least you didn’t take it seriously — and what did you mean, “even if” we were to take Bernstein’s article seriously? Why wouldn’t we, exactly?
Taking Harris’s argument as you lay it out: I guess testosterone is to blame for the difference in people’s liking Sam Harris, not the “estrogen vibe” he talked about? All right, it doesn’t really make any practical difference, so let’s run with that. As Bernstein pointed out, study after study has shown that there are no significant innate differences between the cognition of men and women as individuals. That leaves external/non-innate differences, or innate differences that are so tiny they can only be seen in large controlled studies, where lots of individuals are lumped together “in the aggregate.” So far, both Harris and Bernstein are in agreement. Excellent!
Unfortunately, Harris’s pointing to some sort of nurturing, coherence-building “estrogen vibe” or even the angry, combative, critically-postured “testosterone vibe” (or both!) as possible culprits for why most of his audience is male is problematic, precisely because the gender differences we see in the trait “liking Sam Harris” are HUGE. Harris himself points to a 70% male to 30% female split in his audience. That 40% gap is FAR TOO LARGE to be explained by ANY innate factor (which includes the innate hormones estrogen and testosterone) given literally EVERY BIT OF DATA WE HAVE for innate gender differences.
Therefore, Harris is wrong to put this large gender difference in liking Sam Harris down to anything innate — not testosterone, not estrogen, not “critical posture,” not coherence-building, not nurturing, not anything innate. If he was right, and this difference between genders in their taste for Sam Harris was indeed innate, given everything we know about innate gender differences we wouldn’t even be able to SEE it without large controlled studies precisely because it is ONLY present “in the aggregate.” The difference certainly would not be anything near a 70-30 split. It would be far closer to a 50-50 split, which Harris in his blog reports that he would be — and I quote — “very surprised” by.
Hence Bernstein’s charts, and hence her putting the difference down to something not innate, such as lived experiences. Harris should reflect on his own data, which is (or should be) telling him not to look at estrogen or testosterone or anything else innate but instead to some other, external factor — which may mean that despite his protestations of love for women, or the fact that a woman raised him, or that he has sisters and daughters, or even that he states flat out he didn’t mean to convey there was a difference in critical thinking between men and women, despite all that, the problem may not lie inside the woman, but possibly, just possibly, inside Sam Harris himself.
But Sam Harris can’t, because as he admits in his blog, he hasn’t spent even 5 minutes thinking about how or whether to modify his writing or speaking style so that he might be more palatable to women. He might, I would suggest, begin by attempting to think past his ludicrous beliefs about some innate Sam-Harris-hating gender difference.
Now, should I have laid all of this out on the podcast episode? Certainly, it would have made my case against Harris far stronger. I take responsibility as a poor communicator for that. Chalk it up to my dislike of Sam Harris or my belief that Harris was the least problematic of the three we talked about. Sometimes shit works like you want it to, and sometimes it doesn’t. The difference between Harris and myself is that I seem capable of admitting mistakes and learning from them. Hence this conversation, where I’ve tried to address the deficiencies in that segment of the podcast episode.
I would also like to point out that we’ve been engaged in an at least semi-rational discussion about Harris’s comments across several posts and replies. That in and of itself shows that you were wrong, and continue to be wrong, when you point out that no rational adult could have any problem with Harris’s words. It is indeed possible to disagree with Harris — and you — and still be rational. You might want to reflect on that when, out of your proclaimed sincere, heartfelt concern over the future of rational adult conversation, you ascribe nefarious intentions or irrational impulses to anyone who dares disagree with you.
So now here we are. You’ve laid out your case, and I’ve shown why it’s wrong. Are you going to double down, a la Harris, because you’re too famous or important to be incorrect? Or, contra Harris, are you going to go away for a while to do some actual research and come up with a single article in the entire volume of gender difference literature that shows a 40% gap between men and women that is attributable solely to something innate? Because I — and I imagine the Nobel Prize committee — would be very interested in that.
Or, very contra Harris, are you going to apologize for charging in here accusing me and my two cohosts of a “rampant amount of dishonest criticism” that should “seriously alarm anyone who values skepticism and reason”? Or that we were “demonstrably revising what Harris himself wrote about the situation in order to paint him as a steadfast and proud mysoginist (sic)”? Or that we “specifically misrepresented almost every facet of the Sam Harris situation”? Or that we gave a “clearly intentional misrepresentation” of it all?
Because your next move is going to say a whole lot about who you are as a person, and how similar you are to your hero Sam Harris, and perhaps give me some insight as to why you’re such a fan of his. And it will probably decide for me whether it is worth my time to continue this conversation.
Chuck,
I think I should lay out the chronology of events as I see them so that my objections to the episode in question (and our exchange) can be pinpointed and not further mistaken for any sort of silly hero worship. I would argue just as strongly on your behalf if I felt you were being misrepresented. It occurred to me when you said “You’ve laid out your case, and I’ve shown why it’s wrong” that we might have been arguing over two different things for longer than I thought. I’ll do my best to keep the summaries as brief as possible.
1.Harris makes a statement about what he thinks causes more male atheists than female atheists to be drawn to his style of criticism (not critical thinking in general). This statement was admittedly clumsy and understandably drew criticism from people.
2. Upon seeing his position being described as “critical thinking is intrinsically male”, Harris writes a long blog to clarify that his comment about the “estrogen vibe”, however dumb, was specifically talking about gender factors that might draw more males than females to his particular style of religious criticism and absolutely not suggesting that either gender was more or less likely to think critically. He clearly makes this distinction more than once. This is the point where he has clarified his position. His ideas are now fair game for any and all of us to tear to shreds.
3. I listen to the podcast where you, despite having read all of the information mentioned, sum up Harris’ position as “critical thinking is intrinsically male”. You even mention and read excerpts from the very blog that says the opposite, but still insist that this is his position. There’s also a retelling of a conversation between Harris and an angry audience member that, in my opinion, selectively made it seem as if she was being perfectly rational and Harris told her to more or less fuck off.
3. I go ape-shit (admittedly) and accuse you of dishonestly describing Harris’ position and cherry picking that conversation.
4. You respond to the charge of misrepresenting Harris’ position by attacking his original statement. You say “Perhaps he meant something different, but that just means he is a poor communicator, which is the problem I have had with him all along.” Which would have settled it for me, were it not for the fact that you’d already read and dismissed the blog that said “Nothing in my remarks was meant to suggest that women can’t think as critically as men or that they are more likely to be taken in by bad ideas. Again, I was talking about a fondness for a perceived style of religion bashing with which I and other vocal atheists are often associated.”
4. I respond by pasting the paragraph from the blog that included the statement above, thinking at this point it was obvious that Harris is most certainly not suggesting women aren’t critical thinkers. Again, this is and remains the core of my criticism.
5. You respond to me by arguing against Harris’ actual clarified position on the perceived gender differences, suggesting that since research shows no real difference between the psychology of men and women, Harris is wrong. It’s important to note that, at this point, I’m seeing your position as “Harris is wrong about the innate differences between genders and that proves he’s a sexist who thinks women aren’t critical thinkers.” My head is about to explode by this time. I’m struggling to see how you’re connecting the two. In my defense, you’ve never once officially “switched” from arguing against the misrepresentation of his position and his actual position. From my point of view, it’s all just moving goal posts. In hindsight, I can see how this was destroying any chance of common ground.
6. I respond by attacking Bernstein’s article and your agreement with it, neither of which seemed to explain how Harris being wrong about psychological gender differences meant that he thinks critical thought is intrinsically male. This explains the hypothetical conversation I presented about African Americans and tattoos. If you read that again, it will at least make some relevant sense, knowing my perception of your position at the time.
7. It’s with your final response that I see my consistent position that Harris was never linking critical thought to males has somehow been mistaken for more than this. If this has caused us to needlessly argue about things we might otherwise agree on, let me clear the air with my exact thoughts on all of this (including you).
A. I agree that the “estrogen vibe” comment, even intended to be silly, was a huge mistake.
B. I believe that if one makes such a mistake honestly, it’s better to do your best to clarify your thoughts rather than just “apologize and drop it”. If we behaved this way every time someone got offended, we would never get anywhere.
C. I don’t think for a minute that one can read and understand Harris’ blog about it and walk away thinking he still thinks critical thought is intrinsically male. At best, we can say he’s wrong about what might make his audience more male than female. Those are two very different things, but to me they make the difference between being wrong and being a sexist misogynist.
D. All of that research about there being no psychological differences between genders sits just fine with me. I’m just a sculptor. And an idiot, by the way, so I’ll be happy with whatever the science tells us. My position, again, was never about countering the facts of this research but that Harris being wrong about it didn’t mean that he thought women weren’t critical thinkers.
D. The tenacity with which I have been arguing here isn’t the result of some rabid Harris fandom. It’s over the accusations of sexism. Ever since the whole PZ Meyers “everyone who disagrees with me is a rape apologist” debacle (obviously a paraphrased version of his position), I try to be as careful as possible before throwing accusations of sexist misogyny at anybody. That shit sticks to your reputation like glue whether it’s true or not. I just happened to have read Harris’ blog two days before I listened to your podcast and noticed what I felt were huge discrepancies between his version of the events and your version of his version.
E. It was, in hindsight, perhaps a bit much to throw as many accusations of dishonesty at you guys as I did. There’s no way around it and I apologize.
F. I need to know this, more than ever right now. Given all that Harris has said, however clumsily, to make it clear that he does not think that men are better critical thinkers than women, but that he thinks men might be more attracted to his particular (perceived) style of angry religious criticism than women, what do you feel about it? Do you still think it doesn’t matter? Do you think that he believes, like he says he does, that there’s nothing about men or women that makes one more open to critical thought than the other, but he’s simply wrong about his belief that there are innate psychological differences between the genders? This has been the driving force behind all of this from the minute I finished that episode up until right now. I truly want to know where you are on this given all of the information.
I hope that helps to sort things out. That’s all of it so I hope it was enough to warrant another response. I know we obviously aren’t going to be able to start nitpicking about details from this point, but I hope that I’ve laid out as much as I can to give what I would feel comfortable being called “my case”. Thanks!
I’m going to take some time and re-listen to that segment of the podcast, and then I’ll get back to you. I think with your last post I finally see where it is you’re coming from.
Chuck,
After re-reading our conversation, I think I may have pinpointed a spot that might explain how you came away with your impression of Harris’ original comment. This doesn’t make his wording any less unfortunate, but it might help. When he first describes the way some view his style of religious criticism (angry, or whatever he originally says), he says “there’s something about that critical posture that’s to some degree intrinsically male”. When I re-read your comment “I disagree that anything about a critical posture is “intrinsically male”, I saw what was happening. it looks as if you were taking “that critical posture” to mean “a critical posture” and Harris was using the word “that” to refer to the style of critical posture that he’s known for. It appears that this wording was a ticking timebomb and with good reason.
Ok, I’ve reread Harris’s original quote, then his explanatory blog piece, then re-listened to the podcast.
TL:DR version: Harris’s original comment can be (and should have been) explained away by being caught off guard by an unexpected question in front of a large audience, which he then tried to use humor to deflect. Re-reading his explanatory blog piece, I still think he is, “to some degree,” the sexist pig we’re looking for.
Here’s why:
Apart from the dig at the journalist (why, that vindictive woman! Trying to get me back in print for making her look the fool in front of the audience!), let’s look again at the statistics he is trying to explain: a 70% male to 30% female split in a population of people who like Sam Harris. He will later point out that his twitter audience is 84% male — even worse.
This is where he doubles down. To explain this massive gender gap, he posits some communications issues that might be more appealing to men (critical, angry divisive) and that might be off-putting to women, who, in the aggregate, are more caring and nurturing.
This is sexist under the standard dictionary definition: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. This applies to both the “nurturing, caring” stereotype of a female AND the “angry, combative, critical” stereotype of a male. What bothers me here is that he had some time to go back and research gender differences and does not appear to have done so before typing out his explanation. And if anyone should know about cognitive gender differences, it’s Sam Harris, who is a fucking neuroscientist. It is right inside his wheelhouse.
Then look at the difference between Harris and the unnamed woman in his conversation, meant to show how unreasonable she was being. When Harris points out she was wrong about Sarah Palin, she immediately dropped the subject. When she then presses him on the question of sexism, instead of, perhaps, apologizing for any perceived sexism and admitting perhaps he phrased his response poorly, he moves the goalposts to “if you think we can’t say anything about the differences between two bell curves that describe whole populations of men and women, whether these differences come from biology or from culture, we’re not going to get very far in this conversation.” That is a straw man. It is certainly not what the woman in front of him is trying to argue. This isn’t sexist, but it’s evidence of a sort of stubbornness and unwillingness to admit he’s wrong if he has to retreat to goalpost moving and straw men to support his point.
And then comes the sexism. When he stubbornly explains how it’s not possible for the famous Sam Harris to be wrong, the woman doesn’t accept it. When faced with this, Harris immediately jumps to the sexist position that it can’t be Sam Harris, the fault has to lie within the hysterical female in front of him: “You really are determined to be offended, aren’t you? It’s like you have installed a tripwire in your mind, and you’re just waiting for people to cross it.” Well isn’t that just like a woman! She’s just waiting to be offended, isn’t she? Forget the fact that, over the course of her lifetime, this woman has probably let countless acts of daily casual sexism drop. This whole misunderstanding has to be her fault.
Now is it possible she is just “determined to be offended”? I suppose it is. But assuming that she has some sort of tripwire in her feminine brain, based on this one snippet of one conversation? That’s sexist.
And, of course, his last ditch response. When a bigot is called on his bigotry, what does he usually say? Classically, it’s “I can’t be a bigot, some of my best friends are black.” Here Harris says exactly the same thing. He was raised by a single mother. He has daughters. He respects his wife and female editor. He “tends to respect women more than men.”
Here’s the thing: those things do not make you immune from sexism. On the contrary, they blind you from thinking you could possibly be sexist, because “hey, I respect women more than men.”
And it gets worse. He claims to see gun control issues from “a woman’s point of view.” Really, Harris? You really think you can get inside the head of some kind of mythical woman and see the “ethics of force” from their point of view? After living your entire life as a male? Really?
I’m starting to see why 84% of his Twitter followers are male, and only 16% female. I think maybe, just maybe, he is the sexist pig we’re looking for. Worse? He’s cocooned himself inside a protective shield of “no way can I be sexist, I have two daughters and I love my wife!” which means he’ll probably never realize it.
Chuck,
After re-examining all of the information, do you at least no longer think that Harris was suggesting that men are better critical thinkers than women?
Yes. That was 100% a mistake I made on the podcast, conflating “critical posture” with “critical thinking” (I even read “critical posture” on air and immediately after had a conversation about “critical thinking”). I take full responsibility for that.
@Thundergoose
What’s your take on what Chuck wrote in regards to Harris being sexist?
Jumping in late …
On the topic of normal distributions, differences between the distribution of various traits between men and women, the gender split of Sam Harris’ followers, and what this implies for Sam Harris …
One explanation that has not been brought up is that even if the difference between men and women is relatively small then a 5 to 1 gender split could be completely explained by Sam Harris just being extremely unlikeable. At the tails, a small shift in the mean can significantly change the probability at the extremes.
So, Sam could be a sexist pig, or just a douche.
And, of course, the “or” there doesn’t have to be exclusive.
I didn’t like this at all.
If Shermer is acting like some kind of predator, then it needs to be made a police matter by the women involved. I think thundergoose has put you right on Harris so I won’t labour the point. As regards Dawkins, what a fucking hypocrite Chuck is. At the time of the elevator incident, he made a recording implying Watson was ugly and complaining over nothing. Didn’t he mock her glasses and say she had a “uni brow”. He says he won’t buy any more Dawkins books, I reckon Dawkins will stop listening to this podcast. LAW
After watching this episode, I decided to completely ditch almost any form of an atheist movement. Unless people are being persecuted for being atheists, I don’t really see the point. Its more important we put all these smart atheist minds into action against climate change, as it is becoming a massively worrying situation, and kinda important if you like living on earth with relative comfort.