The following is a rant made in real time while I was reading Sam Harris' "I'm Not The Sexist Pig You're Looking For". I was originally going to post it as a Facebook comment, but then decided that it would be impolite to post such a long comment. So I made it a blog post, because why the hell not.
It isn't particularly coherent or cohesive, but it's certainly passionate. If I cared to, I could probably cobble it into a decent rebuttal, but I'm disinclined to do so. I'll let my "work" stand on its own, because I have already spent more than enough time on this piece of crap that Harris unleashed on the internet.
All punctuation and lack of decent structure are a testament to my not bothering to edit it, so just pretend that the capitals and periods are there, people.
Oh, he's talking about *active* atheists. *rolls eyes*
So, atheist activism is "intrinsically" more male, because Harris sees more men at the conferences he attends, therefore women must not be that into activism. Sorry, suffragettes, you ladies just weren't that into activism.
"more 'nurturing'" Jesus. H. Christ. STOP IT WITH THIS GENDER STEREOTYPING BULLSHIT YOU IGNORANT FOOL. Does he really not get that *this* bullshit is what makes him sexist? *Assuming* that women don't like the angry, in-your-face atheism? HAS HE MET ANY WOMEN? LIKE, EVER?
"if you think testosterone has no psychological effects on human minds in general" This is actually a common misconception, testosterone actually isn't that strongly linked with aggression, and if it is, women are more sensitive to its effects. I googled it recently, because I finally got tired of people trotting out the "but men are aggressive bc testosterone"/biological essentialism bullshit. This is a pretty good, if slightly old, summation of the problems with the "testosterone make men aggressive" hypothesis: http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/cognoculture/testosterone_and_human_aggression_or_180520 (Google "testosterone aggression" for more fun reading; you'll get quite a few articles that do put forward the claim that testosterone is the only reason men are aggressive, but you'll also discover that it's actually kind of way more complicated than that.)
"I was raised by a single mother." Oh god, not this bullshit.
"I respect women more than men, therefore I am immune to the cultural biases present in everyday life, and because I know I'm not sexist, I don't have to worry about when people point out problematic things I say!!!!" Good rationalization, bro.
"Anyone who thinks disparities of this kind must be entirely a product of sexism hasn’t thought about these issues very deeply." What. Like, actually, what. There are academics who spend their whole lives researching this, talking about this, and thinking about this. But because Harris doesn't think that sexism is the leading cause of women being kept out of business, it isn't. Never mind that he accepts that there is a majority Christian population in the US, and he likely also recognizes (unless he's completely bonkers) that Christianity is a *fundamentally* patriarchal religion. Like. This is easier than two and two. Most people are Christian + Christianity is a patriarchal (eg, inherently sexist against women) religion = SEXISM IS WHY WOMEN CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. IT ISN'T THAT HARD, SAM.
"Most of these differences can be explained by general disparities in size, strength, and aggressiveness between the sexes." No. The can be explained in general attitudes towards women as things to possess + a "might makes right" attitude (a seeming staple of American culture, at least).
"slavishly follow the liberal line on gun control" fuck you. Did you know that women in an abusive relationship are way more likely to die at the hands of their partner than the other way around? Do you think having a gun in the house is going to be particularly reassuring to a woman who doesn't know when her husband/boyfriend is going to have a rage-fit? If you'd bothered to know what the fuck you were talking about, Harris, you'd know that women who need protection from their abusive partners don't actually benefit from having a thing in the house that will easily kill them should they happen to be in the area when their partner decides to go off on them for something.
"women are slightly better at this than men." We are constantly on guard, and don't have the privilege of being unaware of our surroundings. I, personally, as a 5'8" large woman don't tend to be bothered by things like walking alone down a street at night; I have a sort of "privilege by association," because I'm rather masculine in appearance, and at first glance might seem to be a guy. So I don't have to worry as much. So I'm not constantly on guard. It's not an inherent woman thing, Sam, it's a "women have been trained since birth" sort of thing.
"My criticism of Islam ... largely inspired by my concern for women" Wow. That's rather patronizing. And sexist. WHAT ABOUT THE MEN WHO ARE AFFECTED BY ISLAM, HUH? DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THEM?
Ugh, that last paragraph just drips awful.
