I'm a Feminist Because I'm an Atheist

Why, oh why do I read the comments on PZ Myers’ blog? Well, in part, it’s because I want to begin garnering some idea how to respond to complete idiocy when it pops up without completely losing my shit. However, sometimes it ends up serving as a complete distraction from a potentially useful or interesting train of thought that I was on. Then I end up feeling as though I’m a hobo that’s been thrown off the train and despite pumping my arms and running furiously, I’ll never be able to perform the feat of catching up to and leaping back onto the train. I’m just not that mentally fit.

At any rate, the derailed thought process. I clicked on what I thought was the very interesting title, “I am an atheist because I am a feminist.” This actually makes total sense to me, but then I thought, “Well, hang on. I think that, for me, I am a feminist because I am an atheist.” In the process that led up to me letting go of God, in particular in considering the argument from morality, it was very much the case that I was forced to acknowledge the grating clash of cognitive dissonance between the values and views about women that I knew were moral and what my religion attempted to tell me were moral. The relief that I felt from no longer having to hold onto that cognitive dissonance was definitely palpable. I could just acknowledge in a very straightforward manner the morals that I knew were right. The process of then shining my moral flashlight into the jumbled corners of my mind and behaviors has been something that is ongoing to this day, and every now and then I am astonished to find a little heap of shit in some corner of the way that I think and act that is so very… sexist, misogynistic, patriarchal, privileged, whatever. And then I try to clean that bit out and get rid of it.

Oh, the comments completely derailed that train of thought because of some dumb shit that wanted to thank the poster of that entry for showing him just how fucking stupid atheists are that anyone could possibly let feminism debunk all theism. Yeah.




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