Secularism: Where Are the Women?

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacques-berlinerblau/secularism-where-are-the-women_b_1727937.html

Jacques Berlinerblau
Director of Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University

Posted: 08/14/2012 11:22 am


As I watch the relentless, well-organized and increasingly effective national onslaught on reproductive freedoms across America I find myself asking: "What's secularism doing about all of this?"

In theory, secularism should be doing a whole lot. For, whether we are speaking about Personhood Amendments in Missisissipi and around the country, preposterous trespasses on patient privacy in Virginia abortion clinics, or last month's congressional vote on prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia, the assault always emanates from the exact same quarter: religious conservatives who wish to impose their doctrinal convictions on every woman (and man) in America.

This, my friends, is secularism's beat, for secularism encompasses a range of political positions that all share a deep skepticism about any and all undue entanglement between religion and government. Insofar as church-state issues are women's issues, one might assume that we'd be seeing intense synergies between the secular and women's movements.

This has not come to pass, for very complex reasons. American secularism's inability to partner on this issue has a lot to do with the fact that American secularism is in a state of disrepair. How far it has fallen from its glory days in the 1960s!

more at link

[trotsky]

1. Evidently MISTER Berlinerblau couldn't even be bothered to Google the phrase...

"women in secularism" to find there was a major conference held earlier this year.

http://www.womeninsecularism.org

[MineralMan]

2. What? And destroy his rant?

Ignorance is bliss.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. On the other hand Orthodox Judaism has a wonderful relationship with women.

As long as they follow the rules that are remarkably similar to those of other fundamentalist misogynist faiths.

[cbayer]

4. I don't think there is a claim being made here that there is not misogyny among other groups.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Representatives of massively misogynist patriarchal religions

ought to just not go there. Besides the fact that the complaint is bullshit the hypocrisy stinks.

[cbayer]

6. I'm not following you. The article is about both religious and non-religious groups that

support secularist causes like women's rights and separation issues working together and wonders why there is a shortage of women in these areas.

[dmallind]

7. No. Fuck no.

My main complaint about organized atheism is that it spends too much time working on things like this. When I was on group boards we spent much much more time working on and dedicating scant resources to supporting gay rights, choice, gender equity and the like. It took effort away from our core reason for existence, it alienated religious supporters of those causes, and did nothing much to help but add a few percent more to their greater numbers anyway.

I fully realize the danger here so let me be crystal clear at the outset: I PERSONALLY FULLY SUPPORT ALL THE ABOVE, BELIEVE MOST ATHEISTS BOTH DO AND SHOULD AGREE, AND EVEN SEE THE SECULAR CONCERNS INVOLVED QUITE CLEARLY.

That said, there are far larger, far better funded, far more organized and far less hated groups working quite successfully on every one of these issues where religion wants to hold back humanity. How much does any one or all of them spend on fighting for religious freedom as a whole and for secularism, atheism or humanism? Not a cent. Not a second.

And in a very clear way neither should they. That is not the raison d'etre of NOW, HRC, or PP. Each group has and should serve religious members of their own for a start, and each is a focused lobby for their own worthy cause.

So why should nonbelievers be different? Why should we be one for all when none of the much bigger groups are all for one? Why can't we focus on our own much neglected and less powerful cause? It's not like we have NRA-level money and influence that could help up poor struggling impoverished HRC. It's not like we are widely loved and respected like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama and can lend our credibility and charisma to boost the ignored ineffective NARAL.

No - such cries are venal Machiavellian-wannabe obvious machinations trying to kill two birds with one stone; keep down the nonbelievers by diluting what paltry media access, funds and credibility they have by spreading it across the thousands of individual ways in which religion retards humanity rather than focusing on the problem that it does so at all just when we are starting to get a tiny bit of traction in spots; tar any progressive cause with the most reviled and hated "brand" in lobbying. Look how much that helped Kay Hagen and how welcome it was to her!

Let nonbelievers fight for nonbelief. Women, gays and reproductive rights advocates have done a damn sight better fighting for their rights than we have, have more money and active numbers to do it, need to shore up rather than repel their own religious support, and probably don't want to be associated with us anyway.

[cbayer]

8. Secularism does not equal atheism, as the article points out.

There are both secular believers and secular non-believers. He is speaking to the alliance between these groups and their loss of coordinated effort to the religious right.

[dmallind]

9. The Venn circles overlap way more than, for example, secularism and feminism for a start

The main issue of course is that secularism is defined in reference to lack of religious hegemony, and not in the merest slightest in reference to gender politics, choice, or sexuality. Simply because religious hegemonists overwhelmingly oppose all those causes too does not make them central to secularism.

I think you'll find I didn't confuse the two either.

[Odin2005]

10. Women are more likely to be religious.

I'm not going into the potential flame wars about WHY that is (though I think it is a bit of both biological neurological differences and cultural socialization), that that is what the data says. That is why there are a lot more non-religious men then there are women, the women who reject organized religion tend to drift towards New Age spirituality.