Michael Nugent - Misrepresentations & Smears

[onager]

Having recently defended Richard Dawkins and the atheist movement against misrepresentations and smears, I now find myself the target of similar misrepresentations and smears.

Having seen at first hand how outrageously inaccurate their smears about me are, I now retrospectively doubt many things that certain people have said to me, or written about, in recent years.

http://www.michaelnugent.com/2014/10/02/another-week-another-set-of-misrepresentations-and-personal-smears/

[Gelliebeans]

1. I missed this story entirely

Sorry. Im trying to catch up
So he defended Dawkins and pointed out the RCC abuse...and people went after him?
I'm trying to understand not being a smartass. I promise

*he does like the word smear though...sorry couldn't help it.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Who is Michael Nugent?

Edit: Nevermind, his blog has a handy-dandy 'about' tab.

wOOt:

[onager]

5. He's a founder of Atheist Ireland

A co-founder of the group is Grania Spingies, who recently made her own statement on this subject:

“I am disgusted by the behavior of those who claim to be promoting feminism by feverishly poring over sentence fragments to see if they can be parsed into meaning something that fits their narrative of suspicion. How any of them think they are actually improving anything for women by trying to convert the arena of ideas and debate into a safe room for infants is beyond me.”

[trotsky]

3. It's very frustrating to see all this.

It's also ridiculous to try and compare it to the sex crime ring known as the Vatican.

I am male, so I am not going to try and state whether the atheist "movement" (whatever that is) is sexist. My perspective isn't very useful there.

I will observe only that the local atheist group I used to belong to had a female president.

I would also hope that any woman who felt uncomfortable at any event would report the incident appropriately. I also hope that no male members of any organization would protect or make excuses for any other male involved in such an incident.

And if ANY skeptic/atheist/freethought org that I gave money to or volunteered for showed ANY complicity in covering up or failing to discipline its leaders or members for any inappropriate behavior, I would summarily QUIT that org and cease giving them ANY support whatsoever. Unlike so many loyal parishioners of a certain religion.

[onager]

4. Crap, Trotsky, now I feel like your "Amen Charlie..."

But I have to agree with everything in your post. And that's really my whole point in posting these Nugent updates.

Most sane people will not devote much time to obsessively monitoring a squabble in the Atheist/Skeptic community. TBH, I'm not either.

However...some DU'ers do seem pretty obsessed with this topic. Especially in A Certain Group. Over and over the question is framed in exactly the same way: "Does atheism have a misogyny problem?"

No, dammit, the human race has a misogyny problem.

By posting these updates, I'm not just being a contrarian PITA. (Well, maybe a little...). I just want to show that there is another side to it.

A side where prominent atheists are being "misrepresented and smeared" for disagreeing with another side.

A funny thing I've noticed - many of those prominent atheists are attacked for being "old white privileged males." Funny because many of their attackers share nearly all those traits. If you have 24/7 internet access, you are privileged. Whether or not that internet access comes with a yacht attached.

I'm also really tired of the old canard of "no women leaders in atheism." Anyone who searches on "women atheist leaders" will find long lists of them, present and former. e.g., the President of American Atheists for 13 years was Ellen Johnson.

I'll close - FINALLY - with one example. Until June 2014, Edwina Rogers - a Republican woman - was the chief DC lobbyist for Secular Coalition of America.

Rogers lost her job under murky circumstances. Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) did some sleuthing and tried to find out what happened:

Board President Amanda Metskas told me her Republican credentials “were always viewed as an opportunity for the Secular Coalition — which is a nonpartisan organization — to expand its reach and influence beyond so-called traditional political boundaries.”

(ANOTHER woman, Amanda Metskas. Damn, we evil misogynist atheists are doing a lousy job of keeping the wimmen down...)

I've linked to the piece because the comments are interesting. Notice how many women comment, and the diversity of opinion about Rogers and atheism in general.

And one commenter, IMO, hits the nail right on the head:

This is what a bit of disfunction within an organization looks like. No unearthed dead children, no murder, no child-rape, no collusion with the Mafia. No helping to spread aids, no encouraging the poor to have more children, no misleading statements about abortion and other womens health issues. No prostitution rings ran from headquarters, no child-hating 'sisters', no five-million-dollar mansion renovations, no hoarding priceless treasure. No employees fired for being gay, no turning entire African nations into homophobic killers, and not a single goddamn claim of infallibility or being guided by a higher force.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/10/why-was-edwina-rogers-fired-from-the-secular-coalition-for-america/

[trotsky]

6. It just confirms what I have been saying for a while.

This is a chance for every religionist or religion defender to once and for all (in their minds) negate ANY criticism of the sexism inherent in all the major religions. "See?? Atheists are sexist too!" Of course, it never dawns on these folks that that was never in dispute. HUMANITY has a sexist problem. The advantage atheists have is that we have no book or doctrine or leader that says it's fucking required.

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. Here's my opinion on the matter

Every civil rights movement has, at some point, come to a loggerheads with itself over inclusion. The labor movement had to come to terms with racism. The civil rights movement needed to come to terms with sexism. The feminist movement needed to come to terms with with an assortment of varying and often contradictory political positions within its ranks. The atheist movement isn't all that different. There are, in our ranks, a wide variety of people whose concerns are literally across the board. Mostly, I think we're fighting over how many of those interests, if any, should be incorporated into the wider movement. A lot of atheists see feminism as an "encroachment", distracting from the purpose of addressing secular concerns. Or, they simply aren't interested in taking up other causes; they just don't feel as passionate about them, and feel out of their element whenever they come up.

That is, in my opinion, the root of the problem.

Now, are there people within the movement who hold sexist opinions? I think so, yes. But when the religionists point to the debates we're having and say, "SEE! TEH ATHIESTS ARE SEXISTS!", they are forgetting one very important fact: that, unlike some religions I know, we are self-policing. The only reason Salon is publishing articles on this mess is because atheists were the first people to bring it up. It isn't coming to light 50 years after the fact because, unlike some religions I know, everyone wasn't deliberately looking the other way when it happened.

The religionists also overlook the role socialization plays in the development of certain attitudes. Railing against religion doesn't change the fact that we were all raised from birth in societies in which the religion of the majority has shaped our perceptions of gender and its place in society. It is easy to point out and criticize the most flagrantly sexist notions of the religions, but it is much harder to recognize, much less divorce one's self, of the subtle, seemingly innocuous attitudes that are ingrained into our very social fabric. So while the religionists rail against "sexist atheists", they are completely ignoring the role their religion played in shaping peoples' attitudes.

All I can say to them is this: I am actively challenging the perceptions of my so-called "leaders". I am not tossing money at men who say things I find objectionable. I am not buying their books. I am not going to their conferences. I am not listening to their podcasts. I am not watching their YouTube channels. So, anyone still throwing money into the collection plate this Sunday can kindly shut the fuck up.

[AlbertCat]

8. My perspective isn't very useful there.

But it IS!

Unless you are appealing to the "men know nothing" branch of feminism... a branch that seems to be part of the problem.