Half of the Slymepit have shown up to support these series of blogs. These are not our supporters or donors. They are harassers and sexists.

I’m completely embarrassed. I feel betrayed that that my allies are upset and the people that wish me ill will are cheering this on. I wish we could go back in time and delete this PR disaster.

One thing you may have noticed already is that I did not give you a formal welcome to Women in Secularism 2. Of course you are welcome here. We're very happy to have you with us, but this is something you know already, and, although I don’t want to appear ungracious, why take up time to state the obvious, because the reality is we have much work to do, and presumably you came here for substance not rhetoric.

@RALindsay a class act - Asks me if I feel welcome, says "Officially CFI welcomes you." - #WIScfi

Now, Ron Lindsay was an egregious violator of civility principles by being such a disrespectful host and then poisoning the well against Rebecca Watson in his post replying to her counter post to his talk and to his first blog defense of it. And this is especially upsetting given that only this past spring he signed a civility pledge meant to set a standard for others in the community to follow. This pledge gave a ton of instruction to people engaged in emotionally upsetting fights, including to people who were on the receiving end of awful interpersonal abuse. I believe in the ideals of that pledge. I believe that even though it demanded people do difficult things that they are vital things that must be done if the movement is to have healthy debates about serious philosophical differences in the future.

And Ron Lindsay showed that he could not stick to the pledge the first time that he felt like someone made an uncharitable reading of his words in a very heated, public dispute after he signed it. The first time! He is asking women, specifically Rebecca Watson, to be bigger than a torrent of abuse that includes rape threats, death threats, sexually degrading photoshops, a website devoted to monitoring their every misstep, etc. And he cannot handle civil criticism from that same woman that was not a fraction as abusive to him as what she has had to endure. And he showed this thin skin while being the host of a conference where she was a speaker and it was his obligation to respect the position that that role put him in as a host. This was an abuse of his position and an embarrassment...

3. It is my belief that SFWA has, under my tenure as president and through the actions of the board as a whole, become an organization with a more diverse membership, and also more useful and helpful to that diverse membership. However, it is also my belief that public perception of the organization matters, not only to the membership that pays its dues, but to those who could become members (and thus strengthen the organization) and to the public who sees the membership comment about the organization in social media. All the positive work the organization does for writers and members means little when things like this blow up.

When they blow up, I believe that we need to respond in two ways. First, own up to and take responsibility for the event. I have done so here. Second, put into motion steps that show immediately and concretely that the organization is committed to not making the same mistakes again.

Other examples of the “shut up and listen” trope are here and here.

There are lots of things I think I’m right about. But I’m less inclined as I go on to think I’m right about everything, and I’m more inclined as I go on to recognize that my perspective is not universal. This means that if I want to learn and to understand things, I will from time to time have to shut up and listen, especially on subjects where others have more experience than I. It’s not always easy, because as noted, expounding is what I’m good at, and I’m not exactly shy. I have to make myself make the effort. It’s worth it for myself, and for how it helps me to understand others.

As speakers, writers, and thinkers, we support the work CFI does. We promote CFI’s programs to our own wider audiences. We provide our time and our skills to further CFI’s mission.

In return for doing all that for CFI’s Women in Secularism conference, we were insulted by CFI’s CEO and required to do more work to make CFI’s conference a success. As a parting gift, many of us face continuing unpleasant repercussions of the actions he took while we were aiding his organization. This is unacceptable.

...Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg decided that the appropriate response to people criticizing their previous remarks as sexist is to throw a fucking shitfit about it. They call the complainers “liberal fascists.” They accuse people who call out sexism of demanding “censorship” and “suppression.” They label such criticism “thought control,” they dismiss their critics as stupid and cowardly, and they imply that people objecting to their statements is tantamount to pushing a freedom-silencing dystopia a la Stalin and Mao.

I am not making this up. I am not exaggerating.

Today, as I write this, I have done a number of things that are expressions of my privilege. I used electricity, all day long. I’m writing on a laptop computer, as I often do well into the night. I did groceries, and I did not go hungry. I ate very well. I did some chores around the house. I took a hot bath. I breathed clean air. I drank clean water. I took my omeprazole on time, reminded by my smartphone. Hell, I walked from point A to point B and didn’t get shot at, not even once. All of these things are little luxuries, so commonplace in my life that I am not conscious of them most of the time. They are all expressions of privilege.

...

In sociology... the term privilege has remarkable descriptive power with regard to the power dynamics we experience, because the term is in fact, definitionally, one pole on those power dynamics (the opposite being “underprivilege”). So when someone says, for instance, “check your privilege”, they mean to check your blind spot. They mean that you should be aware that you may not be equipped to recognize the scope and depth of a problem because of the cognitive biases that keep you from seeing the problem to begin with. They are describing a failure of empathy, where you either compensate for it consciously, or you go on standing on someone’s foot while they cry out asking that you please move.

Atheists didn’t promote this post. Feminists didn’t promote this post. Men’s rights “activists” promoted this post.

So how the hell did it end up in the opening speech for Women in Secularism?

That is what’s bothering me now. How did a blog post known about by MRAs but not secular feminists end up in Lindsay’s speech?

...[A] lot of people sit around in the middle and talk about “reasonableness” — and it is to these people that this post is primarily directed. You have to stop this fence sitting. It is not principled, nor does it reflect reality. Such fence sitting denies what is clearly a substantial problem, and engages in the discussion as though atheist feminists are not being viciously attacked every day by members of the atheist community, and therefore in some sense, are “overreacting” — it denies that the level of overt sexism and hatred being spewed out at atheist feminists more than overwhelmingly illustrates the reality they are speaking to. And it denies that even the much more quiet, clueless contempt they receive at conferences supposedly organized for them does not also, in a more subtle but very significant way, also speak to this reality. This, in other words, is starting to get exhausting.

We’ll know we have gender equity when interference with our work is scrutinized and minimized. People who want to see this movement go forward will get angry at the constant interruption of our work. The noise of continual attacks and constant pettiness will be decried as an attack on the work of the movement. The people who wage those attacks will lose credibility instead of gaining it. Those who libel us will be the problem of all who want this movement to succeed, not just the targets of libel.