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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In My Very Own Skin

I would love to be able to say that it was solely reason and calm analysis that drove my de-conversion process, but it wouldn’t be quite true; which is not to say that reason and analysis played no part whatsoever, because they did, they played a huge part. However, after reading (I think) one of Michael Shermer’s books, I, if I was going to be completely honest with myself, had to re-evaluate some of that intellectual history. I had to include and give proper weight to emotional history as well.

Looking back, I can, of course, find quite a few examples of times where I had doubt, times where I expressed doubt, times where I explored and grappled with doubt. Hell, I wrote a paper trying to tease out why in one version of the story of Kind David taking a census, it was God that told David to do it (2 Sam 24:1), and in the other, it was Satan that told him to do it (1 Chr. 21:1), I told priests in confession (I was Russian Orthodox, confession is an even bigger deal there than in Catholicism, I think) about DOUBTING IT ALL, I refused to get confirmed in the Episcopal Church as a teenager because the catechism instructor wouldn’t answer my questions, I read The Selfish Gene as a teenager. I had me some doubtings, is the point. But every time, I let faith trump doubt, I begged for more faith, the priests told me they saw my faith, I performed some impressive mental gymnastics and lived with the regularly recurring bouts of cognitive dissonance, I defended the fucking indefensible position of the sinfulness of homosexuality to my gay friend. I fucking well believed, I fucking well doubted. I did not engage my doubt. I pushed it aside and shoved it down, I trusted that it would all eventually become clear to me.

I went through a long period of time where I would (usually over beers or whiskey or both) be discussing religious things with a friend or friends and would insist that I was, in fact, very religious, I just wasn’t very good at it. (Yes, I was well and truly an alcoholic by then as well, I just wasn’t ready to deal with that yet, either, other than perhaps in one or two [drunken] diary entries.) So I guess that was a sort of transitional faith period for me. I tried to get back into the church, even, tried to re-become the Reader I had once been ordained to be (like, literally, ordained… by a Bishop and everything – I still have my Reader’s robe, and it’s fucking cool – makes me feel like Neo or something).

Then I met some people. More than that, I met the people that I knew were my people. And they were atheists. Every one of them. Or near enough. One was an igtheist at the time (and yes, I did have to look that one up). One is just an avowed hippy who doesn’t believe in a god, but doesn’t really give a shit about any of that – or no, just gives a shit way more about the people around her. These were the people that, in their own way, sort of deconverted me. They did not by preaching, per se, but by being open about who they were. Yes, we did talk about that stuff. With gusto, with joy, with passion. More than anything, really, they made it acceptable for me to begin to engage with my own doubt. Let me say that again, just in case: they made it okay. I did the thinking, the engaging, the reading, the research – in the end, all of that really is done with oneself; faith is an intensely personal thing, in some way (intensely social, too, but that’s a separate, if related, topic). But they made it ok to be me.

So after a while of doing some more reading and research, I did what I called, “Trying it on for size.” I couldn’t just jump off the bridge and free fall into atheism, so I tried it on for size for a little while, as if it were a t-shirt, to see how it fit. It fit. In fact, after a while, I realized that what I had actually done was take of a whole suit of ill-fitting clothes so that I could walk around naked comfortably, in my very own skin.

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Obligatory Introductories

So, I went back and forth on this labeling stuff for a long time, but a while ago, I decided that (for the moment, at any rate) I'm alright with it. I know there's the fear of being restricted by labels, but I think that I like them for quite the opposite reason; they give me a freedom. Mostly it's the freedom of not being alone. These words help to connect me to a larger group of people in some very real ways.

Now, the other confession/frustrating thing is that I don't believe I have ever laid out in a single place for any one group of people all of the self-identifications that I like. This sucks. This is the opposite of freedom. I hate hiding, I hate the implication that I am constantly acting, because I constantly feel as though I am and I struggle with that.

And so, I am... a papa. I am... an atheist. I am... a secular humanist. I am... a religionist in recovery. I am... an alcoholic in recovery. I am... a polyamory person (totally not in recovery). I am... a feminist. I am... a total bibliophile. I am... a geek (in a limited sense, technology not really being one of them)... or a nerd, depending.

And I will discuss and reference and otherwise sling about related words and things that grab my interest, excite me, piss me off, etc.


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