Will Misogyny bring down the atheist movement?

[Spero]

It's a long article, but quite interesting about the problems some skeptics/atheists seem to have with women and asks why a progressive, important and intellectual community can behave so poorly towards its female peers.

www.buzzfeed.com/markoppenheimer/will-misogyny-bring-down-the-atheist-movement

I quote: The roots of today’s crisis can be found in the post-war history of the movement. The groups that make up the broader freethought community — atheists, who don’t believe in a god; agnostics, who are unsure; secular humanists, who seek to replace god-centered religion with a man-made ethical system; church-state separationists, who just want religion kept out of public life; and scientific skeptics, who work to overthrow superstition and pseudoscience — have two things in common. First, they oppose the hegemony of religious, including New Age, thinking in American culture. And second, they all have roots in very male subcultures.

So am I being naive in pledging allegiance first to humanism rather than feminism? Are the problems in male subcultures so deep rooted that my energies should be first directed at tackling those?

Interested to hear what other atheist feminists think.

That probably explains a lot doesn't it? They desire you but have been taught that these desires are shameful. So you create all these difficult 'feelings' within and become something they can project their own miseries and uncertainties upon.

Aristotle (I think it was him) was right when he said losing his libido as an old man was like 'being unchained from a lunatic'.

Mine has certainly done me no favours on occasion ...

Oh, I love that!

I do wonder about libido and gender. I'm sure men can't be excused by saying their libido is more powerful than women's (which could, for some, go some way to explaining why men are capable of committing such atrocious acts sexually), so why are they seemingly so driven by it? Or is it nothing to do with libido and everything to do with entitlement/power?

I've just been told on another thread that it is ridiculous to suggest men want more sex than women. I would be delighted if that is so but I don't think studies show it nor many many mumsnet sex threads.

There is the point, with which I agree, that rape has very little to do with sexual desire but a lot to do with power and entitlement. Maybe the libidoissue is just the icing on a large cake of entitlement issues.

but it does seem that for many their ingrained response is to react to a woman saying something they don't like, by threatening her with rape and/or death.

I take it that you mean the tiny group of people who post in various chat rooms on the Internet and engage in abusive and threatening behaviour cloaked by anonymity.

Because there's a big old world out there beyond the Internet where people just get on with life...

I'm not sure that what a few people type on the Internet is really an indication that atheism is inherently misogynistic. I think some atheists are misogynists.

Re men wanting more sex than women - didn't Stephen fry make the point (and was monstered for it) that you don't tend to get large groups of women gathering on Hampstead Heath or similar for some quick sex in bush with a complete stranger.

But he's right isn't he? The San Francisco bath houses were the preserve of gay men. I can't think of a similar facility for women. Is that just because we have been 'taught' not to want that or is it because men do have 'more' libido?

Thebogqueen - I spend a LOT of time on the Internet as you can probably tell. It may be a minority but it certainly isn't tiny. Check out sites like Return of Kings. Have a read of the tweets about the free Ched Evans campaign.

It's getting more mainstream in my view.

Also, women don't tend to visit gigolos for sex in the same way men visit prostitutes. Why is this? Would it be daft to rule out testosterone in debates about why men do and think the things they do?

BogQueen, I believe the internet is a perfect microcosm of the world at large. Whatever is being spouted on there - whether it is fuelled by anonymity or whatever - is being spouted (or at least thought) out here.

I think women don't go cruising etc., purely and simply because it's dangerous.

If I fancied a shag, I could tart myself up and go down to a bar tonight and pick up a bloke and I've got pretty much 100% odds of success. However, there's a slight risk that that man may torture me and then kill me, so however much I might fancy a shag, I'm going to stay in and listen to the Moral Maze instead. Claire Fox and Michael Portillo talking shit is preferable to running the risk a woman runs when she shows that she's amenable to no-strings sex. That's without the childcare etc. that women have which don't tend to trammel men.

With regards to actually paying for a registered prostituted man, I think most women simply don't have the sense of entitlement that goes along with buying the use of someone else's body for sex and would feel it was wrong. Along with the entitlement issue there's another dimension: women are socialised to get lots of validation from men's sexual desire, so to give up on that, to have sex with someone who doesn't have desire for you, who is only doing it because you're paying him, is almost like giving up on validation and self-esteem - lots of women are really reliant on male validation for their sense of self-worth and it would feel like crossing a rubicon to embrace the idea that they have dispensed with that validation and are just using money to get their jollies, just like men do.

Agree re danger, Basil.

Good points Basil

I certainly don't bear a torch for women with low sex drives, but I do think on the whole women seem to find it easier to get sex without paying than men do and in marriage more men complain about not enough sex than women do and women tend to want less and their husbands more. I would be delighted if I were wrong. Am still trying to find a religion which entitles me to 4 husbands and men to only one wife. I shall have to found my own cult... laughing as I type.

Women can pay for sex but there is much less demand for it across the world for all kinds of reasons but I suspect partly because men think about sex more often on an average day than women do and women have lower levels of testosterone than men which is as we all know a provable scientific fact.

As for danger I agree although plenty of men (and some women) who could get safe sex with people they know of either sex will often particularly want the more riskier sex. The risk is part of their fun although I accept the risk of being beaten up rather than being caught with your secretary in the office is a different risk.

Good points Basil, but also the fact that women can go out with friends and usually find a friend of a friend to shag if they want, thus reducing that danger, means cruising in a bar isn't necessary.

Women are socialised to use language and imagination more, which I think results in a richer fantasy life where men are being as objectified as in any porn, but because it's only imaginary people rather than real actors, it's not a problem. Women write the vast majority of fanfic, which again is about imaginary characters rather than the real actors. Men however grow up knowing that their fantasies can always use a magazine or video as a prop, because they're easy to find.

I think there is a lot of socialisation around sex and sex drives that makes it difficult to unpick the differences between female and male sex drives and behaviour. Women are socialised that they shouldn't want sex as much as men. Women and men are socialised into a particular type of sex - the eroticisation of women's submission, men as the consumer, women as the consumed. Not only are women at risk of assault and murder if they go for random sex, they are at risk of social judgement and also of not having the type of sex they necessarily want. This may also be the case with women in long term relationships. Maybe they do want more sex but they don't want the type of sex they've been having with their husbands.

There was a study published from Japan this year about the number of women giving up on sex altogether. Given some of the absolutely dire sexual themes that are prevalent in Japanese pornography (women hanging for example), I'd probably give it up there too.

Yes there is that.

I can go out to a bar tonight and get sex and I have to consider myself lucky if I don't get murdered. That's quite a low bar.

The idea that I might actually get good sex, with orgasms and fun and stuff - well that's just like asking for the fucking moon on a stick isn't it?

Richard Attenborough tonight.

Chunderella, again depressing, but I think your last sentence is spot on.

Haven't read the thread- but in answer to the thread title's question, misogeny hasn't "brought down" anything else- so why should the atheist movement be different?