Category: skepticism

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feminism skepticism

PZ wants opinions from us womens

At Pharyngula: the Woman Problem

It’s actually very refreshing to see someone from the male half of the species asking this question and requesting opinions. From a feminist standpoint, I’ve long considered PZ to be an ally to the cause (and a feminist himself) so he hasn’t disappointed me here.

I already voiced my opinion in the comments, but since this is my blog and I can say whatever the hell I want, I’m going to repeat myself here and expand it a bit.

So, how can we get more women involved in atheism and/or skepticism? I’m looking at this from more the viewpoint of skepticism, mostly because I don’t even have a passing handshake with organized atheism.

  • Make events more kid-friendly/provide some sort of childcare – In his post, PZ links to a post by Skeptifem that is well worth the read. One of her major points is that women are often very busy, and that how busy we are often goes unacknowledged. I think one of the really pertinent things here is child care. Now, a lot of skeptical households might be all manner of progressive and enlightened, but women still tend to bear the burden of housework. (One example here.) That likely makes it a lot more difficult for a woman to make it to an all-weekend event, for example, because she would have to either put off that work (the vacuuming can wait) or arrange for someone else to take over (the kids probably need someone to feed them). Making major events/conferences child friendly to the extent that there’s either activities for the kids to engage in while mom’s listening to lectures or providing on-site babysitting (I’d daresay even for an extra, reasonable fee) would probably enable a lot more attendance from women. And I’m saying this as a woman who doesn’t have kids and isn’t planning to in the near future – I just don’t think that people in my situation make up the bulk of women that might want to be involved in organized skepticism.
  • Make an effort to include more women from the top down
    Oh noes, not affirmative action! What the fuck ever. I don’t think all women are shrinking violets that would shy away from attending a giant sausage fest of events. I’ve gone to a great many events (for various organizations) where women were very much in the minority. But I also know that I was not entirely comfortable in doing so – and would often seek out other women if my discomfort level got out of control – and this even though I don’t have a problem being confrontational and I’m reasonably intimidating when I want to be. The more women you have at your event, the more welcome other women will generally feel there. And the way you advertise your event as a safe and interesting place for (feminist) women is by having having female speakers – or in a pinch, outspoken male allies. So go out of your way to find more woman.

    I think the dearth of female speakers/presenters at events may be produced by a sort of negative feedback loop. Women are sometimes treated as if we don’t have anything interesting to say, therefore we are not given opportunities to speak, therefore anything interesting we might have to say is not heard by a broader audience. There aren’t many women who are “big names” within the skeptical movement, compared to men. A lot of that fame within the movement feeds on itself. If you’ve got a little fame as a skeptic, you get asked to speak at an event, and thus you are more famous and get asked to more events. Unless you’re given a platform to pontificate upon, it doesn’t matter how interesting and erudite you are. You won’t be heard.

  • Continue working to make skepticism mainstream for women
    Someone in PZ’s comments pointed out that there’s plenty of female attendance at woo events. I’d lay good money that those sort of events are strongly aimed at women, because it’s very socially acceptable for women to be into all sorts of unscientific shit. Encourage women to shy away from the hard rationalism of science and then give them somewhere that their socially acceptable “intuition” can have free reign and be praised, you’re damn right they’re going to feel comfortable and happy going to those kind of events. So what can we do about that? Prominently advertise the women who are involved in skepticism and do our part to making rationality and intellect laudable female traits. Continue the general work of science cheerleading and promotion of skepticism, but make certain that women are involved in that as well. Promoting skepticism with an all (or almost all) male face unfortunately just contributes to the image that skepticism is male territory and women have no place there.
  • Make the environment safer/more welcoming
    We have varying degrees of comfort about sexist jokes. Personally, I know I am completely unbothered at times, and at other times I’m as offended as hell. Not all women are like me. Some are more sensitive or less sensitive. But if you foster an environment where it’s okay to make sexist comments or jokes, and the only male reaction to it is either laughter or a dismissal of female complaints, you can’t really blame some of the women for just checking out entirely. This even comes down to individual responsibility of attendees. If you want to see more women at conferences, then when one of your fellow men gets creepy at some poor woman whose only mistake was being in his presence while in possession of breasts, you’d damnwell better tell him to knock it the hell off. If you really want more women at these events, then you’d better want us there for our contributions, and not just because you want someone that you can hit on.
  • Don’t insult our intelligence
    Enough with mansplaining. Seriously. And the next person to claim that my pitiful ladybrain just can’t handle math is getting punched in the face. I mean it.
    •

    There are probably other barriers to female attendance. If you look for the comments on PZ’s post from someone with the nick Cerberus, she makes some really good points as well – like how often libertarianism is given a free ride, and how that may really put some people off. (I tend to tune out the libertarian stuff, since I am so, so very done with it.) The big thing is that there are barriers, and acknowledging them is the first step to taking them down.

    And is this a problem that actually does need to be addressed? If we’re just in this for show and to pat ourselves on the back, well, in that case it’s fine to dismiss the potential contributions of a great many people because getting them involved is too much effort. If we’re just in this so we can feel superior to all those poor schmucks who just aren’t rational enough, then it’s a nice ego boost to shake our heads and cluck our tongues about all those sad women, who just can’t do skepticism because they’re wired to be “intuitive” and “feeling,” whatever the fuck that means.

    If we’re serious about our cause and our mission, however, then we’ve already waited too long. It’s a problem and a sad waste that we’re missing out on so many people that could otherwise be contributing. It’s a problem and a base hypocrisy that some are not casting a skeptical eye at our own social institutions. And it’s long past time things changed.

    Categories
    skepticism

    Science, Skepticism, and Faith

    Yesterday, Dr. Novella (my hero) made a post at Skepticblog on this topic: Science and Religion – Again

    It’s really hard for me to say much more than /agree to that post. The man is more coherent and eloquent than I think I’ve ever been in my wildest dreams.

    I will say that this goes a long way toward elaborating on the utter discomfort I’ve felt some times at skeptical events. It’s no secret that I’m an atheist, and that I don’t personally have much use for faith, let alone organized religion. But I start feeling really squirmy when some of my fellow non-believers get frothy enough to declare that someone can’t possibly be a good skeptic if they’re not also an atheist. I’m really not a fan of purity tests when it comes to inclusion in a social group; once you get to that point, it seems that a rapid slide in to savaging one another for not being whatever enough is almost inevitable.

    Now, this is not to say that I think many religious/faith-based claims should be given a free pass. But this is the big point, as stated by Dr. Novella:

    It is important, in my opinion, for skeptics to be crystal clear on this point, because often the purveyors of pseudoscience will try to evade falsification or the negative effects of evidence on their claims by positioning the claim outside of science. At that point the skeptic must acknowledge that science can no longer demonstrate that the claim is likely to be false, but rather the claim is no longer scientific and can only be an article of faith.

    If there’s a claim that you can build a scientific test around, it’s fair game and shouldn’t be given a pass. Faith healing? You can test that – if the tumor hasn’t been prayed away, the answer to that claim is pretty apparent. Someone says that they can talk to your mom’s ghost? If they can’t answer questions about her without resorting to google or cold reading, there you go. If nothing else, claims like that are things you can put in to a really nice “If… then…” statement. “IF that is real Bigfoot hair, THEN it definitely shouldn’t have the DNA of a yak,” or “IF homeopathy works, THEN it will have a statistically significant effect in randomized, placebo-controlled trials” or “IF the Shroud of Turin is a real artifact, THEN it will carbon date to the appropriate age and there will be evidence that the image is created with blood rather than paint.”

    But if someone tells me, “I believe in God because I can feel His love in my heart,” well… there isn’t a lot I can do with that. Let me see… IF you really feel God’s love in your heart, THEN… uh… THEN…

    I suppose I could get in to a philosophical argument at that point, because once you’ve hit the faith-zone, that’s all you have left. But frankly, I don’t have a whole lot of use for philosophical anything, let alone philosophical atheism. (Sorry, guys.) My own conclusions are based on what I feel is a lack of convincing evidence for the existence of a god, rather than long-winded debates about the existence of evil or what-have-you in the world. Because when you come down to it, my non-belief is the result of evidence that cannot be tested in such a way as to provide a solid conclusion. I took a look around and decided that, well, with that we’ve got there’s no reason to actually believe in a god, but I’ll keep an eye out to see if things change.

    But you know what? I think it’s just as fair that someone else looked around and decided that, well, with what we’ve got there’s no reason to not believe in a god. And hopefully they’ll keep an eye out to see if things change as well.

    Categories
    skepticism

    Skeptics and Science

    Daniel Loxton has written an interesting post over at Skepticblog about the role of skeptics in science. There’s quite the lively discussion going on in the comments of the post, as you can imagine.

    For the most part, I agree with him. I’m in an interesting position as a skeptic with just enough science education (woohoo, undergrad degree!) to make me dangerous, so to speak. I find it fascinating that the skeptic movement has come up swinging when it comes to evolution denial, whether in the form of Intelligent Design or good old Creationism, but seems to be chasing its own tail when it comes to the science surrounding climate change. Now, I think part of the problem here is that the climate science is relatively new – at least in our understanding of it – compared to evolution, or geology, or medicine. Part of it may even be the subconscious realization that the climate science is saying something very scary about the way we live and the future that may be in store for us. I’ve honestly found it rather infuriating.

    This actually makes me think of the little speech that Dr. Farmer gave at the department graduation last week. He told us that part of the importance of having our degrees is that it means we don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. We have the tools necessary to think for ourselves. Now, I’m sure this sentiment could be interpreted as something that supports the climate change deniers, for example. They’re just refusing to take the scientists’ word for it. Fight the power!

    I couldn’t disagree with that more.

    Having critical thinking skills and an understanding of basic science doesn’t mean that within us all is the power to take raw data and interpret is perfectly, or come to a reliable expert opinion after staring at tide gauge graphs for a couple of hours. What it does mean is that we don’t have to take, say, Al Gore’s word that climate change is a real thing and is happening. Rather, because we know how science works, we know where to go looking for the papers and the research. We can find a reliable body of experts in their field, such as the IPCC, because we know what sort of methodology and review are indicative of robust research.

    This leads to how I often respond to just about any scientific issue that doesn’t involve geology (and many that do, since I’m certainly no expert); well, I don’t know enough to have my own opinion, but these other guys (e.g. the IPCC) have some good credentials and evidence, so I’ve got to go with them. The real pitfall here is that it’s very easy to get caught in the same trap as Randi did with the “Petition Project.” Some denialists are quite well camouflaged, and when they’re saying what you’d like to hear anyway, it becomes something of a siren song. Determining just who you ought to be listening to because you lack the necessary scientific background on your own is a gargantuan skeptical task in and of itself.

    Skepticism works best when we’re going after pseudoscience because pseudoscience is at its heart bullshit lovingly dressed up in a lab coat. It takes twenty minutes on Google to become an expert (so to speak) on why homeopathy is crap because the base claim is so ridiculous in the face of reality. Psuedoscience and the paranormal often have only a lack of critical thinking or a dearth of common knowledge to support them; we bring in the “big guns” of basic scientific thought, and we win. The only expertise you need for these fights is in the field of critical and scientific thinking.

    Once you get in to something like climate science, however, it’s time to admit that just one’s expertise at being a skeptic is no longer sufficient. When you’re wading in to a scientific field hip deep, you actually need expertise in that field to understand its subtleties and its messy parts, its strange interpretations and incredibly counter intuitive bits. At that point, whether you like it or not, you start relying on consensus and experts in the field. Or, I suppose, you can start sounding like an arrogant jerk who thinks that he understands tidal fluctuations when coupled with changes in the Earth’s geoid better than some schmoe who just (psh, whatever) did his PhD in it.

    Critical thinking skills don’t give you the expertise to interpret data in a field that you haven’t been trained in. But it does give you the ability to detect that whiff of bullshit on the wind when an anti-vaccinationist waves around a study with a pathetically small sample size and some very dubious methodology in it. To rephrase what Dr. Farmer had to say, having a good science education means discerning just whose word is worth taking.

    Categories
    feminism skepticism TAM

    Women at TAM (SGU interview)

    There’s a lively discussion going on at Skepchick regarding women in skepticism. More precisely, women in skepticism as things went at TAM, which was discussed in this week’s Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe via interview. Here is the SGU forum thread about that episode, which contains a lot of discussion about the interview.

    I did attend TAM this year, and do happen to be female. There were basically two issues brought up in the interview: subtle sexism, and Bill Prady’s speech.

    I’ll get Bill Prady out of the way first. He gave the keynote speech, and in it he mentioned that guys should try an experiment: if a woman comes up to them in a bar and asks what their sign is, half the time they should tell her she has pretty eyes, and half the time they should tell her why astrology is crap, and they should see which yields better results. There were some women at TAM that found the comment a bit offensive. I personally thought it was a hilarious observation, because I felt he was saying that women, whether we believe in astrology or not, would rather receive a compliment than a condescending lecture. I think that’s spot on; we’re not morons, we don’t like being lectured, and it’s not appropriate in the social context. I obviously took the comment differently from how other people did, and that’s quite okay.

    Generally, I was a bit put off by the clips from The Big Bang Theory just because I’m tired to death of women always being the believers in these shows. I didn’t necessarily feel that the female character was portrayed as stupid, just as non-skeptical. And that, I could do without. But whatever. I don’t watch the show anyway.

    That’s out of the way, now.

    The more interesting – and much more important – point of the interview was if there’s a sort of subtle sexism existing in the skeptic community, and if so, what can we do about it.

    Honestly, I couldn’t tell you one way or another. I haven’t noticed anything generally myself, and I’ve never been made to feel uncomfortable at TAM or other skeptical events. Part of this is because the Denver contingent of skeptics is fabulous. Part of this may also be because I’m a chubby, nerdy girl that refuses to wear anything fancier than jeans and a t-shirt, so it’s very possible that I get dismissed out of hand by the predatory assholes. I’m quite okay with that.

    I did definitely notice that TAM was very short on the people of color (POC from here on out) and women speakers department. Dr. Novella did explain that however as partially just being that the POC/female speakers who were invited (other than Jennifer Ouellette and Harriet Hall) couldn’t attend due to scheduling conflicts. That’s very reasonable and something that can definitely happen with conventions. Also, there could be the effect that there are more white dude speakers to choose from right now than there are POC/women, for many reasons. (Some of said reasons being quite bad and worrisome.)

    Women made up around 30% of the attendees of TAM this year, which is a fantastic amount of growth in attendance. I think that’s very cool. It shows that more women are getting interested in the movement, which I think is a good thing.

    So, was there sexism? I don’t know. I don’t think people were being sexist; I certainly didn’t meet anyone who was. But individuals being sexist jerks isn’t the same as a general situation being influenced by subtle or ingrained sexism, which was really the point, I think.

    What the question comes down to is simply this: are women being excluded somehow, for whatever reason? Skepticism started out male dominated, and is still fairly male dominated, though women are making inroads. So, are we fighting [hard enough] to be inclusive? Are their factors at work that will still leave women feeling like this is an unwelcoming sausage fest? I think that’s the sort of sexism that was being discussed in the podcast. And I think those are questions that should definitely be aired and considered, whatever the answer turns out to be. In general, society is still quite sexist in many ways, and that may still have it’s subtle influences on skeptical society. If so, then we should know the how and why. If not, then we should make sure we’re not prematurely patting ourselves on the back.

    I think that’s definitely a good thing to investigate and a good discussion to have, particularly since many of the men of the skeptical movement have stated that they want to see women more involved. (Or have less proactively bemoaned the fact that women “just aren’t interested in science/skepticism” without examining why.)

    One thing that’s really struck me in the discussion is how hostile some people are being about it. There’s a distinct flavor of “I’m a skeptic, I’m enlightened, how dare you say I’m sexist” coming from some people. First of, no one has accused anyone else of being sexist. But second off, that umbrage is indicative of something else I think skeptics need to take a good hard look at. There’s a level of arrogance that can come with labeling oneself as a skeptic. You get to be cooler than those silly believers who buy nonsense. I think that arrogance is showing up here as well, in a rather ugly way. People consider themselves to be enlightened individuals, and are going on the attack because they think it’s been suggested that they may not be.

    I think the people who are getting nasty need to take a long look at themselves. If you’re an enlightened skeptic, the way to prove that is not to attack someone that disagrees with you, or has an opinion you don’t like. It’s to be the “better man” and rationally discuss.

    “How dare you call me a sexist, you reverse-discriminating feminazi!!!!”

    versus:

    “I disagree. This is why.”